Europe’s transition to zero-emission mobility is well underway, but progress is uneven — and without solid data, that unevenness is easy to miss. That’s the gap Transport & Mobility Leuven (TML) is closing for the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA): building on an earlier gap analysis, TML is now developing a set of key performance indicators (KPIs) that track the sector’s progress in real time through an interactive dashboard, giving policymakers and industry experts a shared, up-to-date picture of where the transition stands.
The original TML study identified four structural bottlenecks that still frame the analysis: whether the electricity grid can absorb rising EV charging demand; whether electric vehicles are affordable and attractive enough for mass adoption; whether charging infrastructure is available in the right places; and whether battery producers have competitive energy prices and sufficient manufacturing capacity. The new KPI set sharpens these into measurable, trackable indicators, feeding a dashboard that updates as new data comes in.
The latest reporting round, covering Q2 2026, shows how much this kind of monitoring can reveal. On the grid side, installed solar capacity per vehicle has risen to around 1.2 kW but remains far below the 3.2 kW target, while vehicle-to-grid readiness jumped from 13% to 20% of available models year-on-year. Smart meter penetration sits at 61% — progress, but still short of full coverage.
Consumer adoption tells a similarly mixed story: the EU-27 market share of zero-emission passenger cars climbed to 21% in the first half of 2026, up from 15% a year earlier, and the number of affordable EV models priced under €30,000 grew from 12 to 25. Battery pack prices have fallen to €92/kWh, a 75% drop since 2015.
Charging infrastructure is expanding fast too. Public charging capacity reached 41.6 GW by June 2026, up 29% year-on-year, and the number of public charging stations (195,082) now exceeds the number of fuel stations in Europe. Yet the EU-27 still has only around 1.2 million charging points against a 2030 target of 3.5 million, and without continued investment, the ratio of available to needed capacity is projected to fall sharply by the end of the decade.
In manufacturing, Europe’s operational battery production capacity stood at 262 GWh/year by mid-2026 (well below the 1,136 GWh/year target), while industrial electricity prices remain roughly 1.4 to 2.5 times higher than in the US and China.
This is exactly the value of a live KPI dashboard: it turns scattered progress into a coherent, comparable narrative, making it possible to spot where the transition is accelerating, where it risks stalling, and to adjust strategy accordingly, before bottlenecks become permanent barriers.
Supported by ClaudeAI