Electric Cars in Cyprus: Will All Cars Be Electric by 2035?

Electric Cars in Cyprus: Will All Cars Be Electric by 2035?

This guide sets out, as of 8 November 2026, what the official record says about electric cars in Cyprus and about the question in the title: will every car be replaced by an electric one? It draws on the text of the EU regulations on car CO2 standards, the European Parliament’s legislative tracker, ACEA registration releases, Eurostat, the Statistical Service of Cyprus (CYSTAT), the European Commission’s assessment of the Cyprus energy and climate plan, the plan itself, the Funding Programmes Portal of the Republic of Cyprus, ministry statements reported by the Cyprus Mail, and the International Energy Agency (IEA) Global EV Outlook 2026. Every figure carries its source and date.

The main findings are these. The 2035 date is a rule on new cars sold by manufacturers, averaged across the EU, and the European Parliament’s environment committee voted on 4 November 2026 on a text that would soften it. In Cyprus, battery-electric cars were 10.07% of the 14,634 new cars registered in 2025 (ACEA), and CYSTAT counted 5,244 electric passenger cars among 667,841 licensed at the end of 2025. The fourth purchase-grant call has closed, and the national plan’s fleet target of 85,000 electric vehicles by 2030 needs about 15,500 additions a year against about 2,200 in 2025. Worldwide, the IEA reports that one in four cars sold in 2025 was electric, while about 5% of the global car stock is electrified. The sections below show the arithmetic that links those numbers to the headline question.

Electric cars in Cyprus: the short answer

The 2035 date comes from European Union law on the CO2 emissions of new cars. It limits what manufacturers may sell, measured as an average across the whole EU, and the regulation’s scope is new passenger cars registered in the Union for the first time (Regulation (EU) 2019/631, Article 2). It contains no date by which cars already on the road must be withdrawn. In Cyprus, the final 2024 National Energy and Climate Plan (NECP) repeats the aim of pure-electric vehicles for all new vehicles in 2035, with 25% of new passenger cars in 2030, and adds a fleet target of about 85,000 electric vehicles by 2030.

The measured position in autumn 2026 sits well below those figures, and the EU rule itself is under revision. The table collects the headline numbers with their sources and dates; the sections after it explain each one.

Where the 2035 target comes from: EU law, not a Cyprus statute

The legal source is Regulation (EU) 2023/851, which amended Regulation (EU) 2019/631 on CO2 performance standards for new cars and vans. It was published in the Official Journal on 25 April 2023 and, under its Article 2, entered into force on the twentieth day after publication, which is 15 May 2023. The amended text raises the 2030 reduction level for new cars from 37.5% to 55% and for new vans from 31% to 50%, measured against 2021. From 1 January 2035 it sets an EU fleet-wide target equal to a 100% reduction for both cars and vans.

Two features of that wording matter for the headline question. First, the target is a fleet average for each manufacturer across the EU. It is not a quota for each member state, so the regulation does not require any share of Cyprus’s new registrations to be electric. Second, the scope is limited to passenger cars of category M1 registered in the Union for the first time. The Commission’s climate pages translate the targets into grams: 93.6 g CO2 per km for new cars in 2025 to 2029, 49.5 g in 2030 to 2034 and 0 g from 2035, and they note that the 2035 figure remains in force unless the proposal described below is adopted.

The regulation also looks ahead. Its Article 15 requires the Commission to evaluate the regulation in 2026, including progress towards the 2035 targets and whether they need revising, and recital 11 says the Commission will propose a way to register vehicles that run exclusively on CO2-neutral fuels after 2035. The revision now in Parliament and Council follows from that review clause.

Cyprus’s own 2035 aim was stated publicly on 6 February 2024, when, according to the Cyprus Mail, government spokesman Konstantinos Letymbiotis said the goal was for all new cars bought in Cyprus to be electric by 2035, with 25% of new cars registered in 2030 being fully electric. The same figures appear in the final 2024 National Energy and Climate Plan, where they are framed as national targets under Regulation (EU) 2023/851. The plan is a policy document submitted to the European Commission; the EU regulation is the instrument that binds manufacturers.

What changed in the EU rule in 2025 and 2026

Three steps have altered or are altering the rule since the 2023 text. The first is Regulation (EU) 2025/1214, signed on 17 June 2025 and published on 19 June 2025. It lets a manufacturer meet its 2025 to 2027 targets as an average over the three years instead of year by year, with an excess emissions premium still due if the three-year average is above target. The second is the Commission’s automotive package of December 2025. The third is the legislative work on that package in 2026.

According to the European Parliament’s Legislative Train page, dated 25 October 2026, the Commission tabled its proposal to amend Regulation 2019/631 on 16 December 2025 (procedure 2025/0420(COD)). For new cars the 2035 target would become a 90% reduction against 2021, with the remaining share offset by credits for EU-made low-carbon steel and sustainable renewable fuels. For vans it would be 40% in 2030 and 90% in 2035. Compliance for 2030 to 2032 would be assessed over several years, and makers of small zero-emission vehicles would earn super-credits. The Commission’s climate page adds that plug-in hybrids, range extenders, mild hybrids and combustion-engine vehicles could still play a role after 2035 under the proposal.

On 4 November 2026 the environment committee voted on its text. Electrive reported a 48 to 30 vote with two abstentions, and Euronews reported that the transport and industry committees had backed a similar compromise on 22 October. In that text the 2035 reduction for cars is 95%, and manufacturers could earn up to a further 7.5 percentage points from low-carbon EU steel, so the lowest possible target is 87.5%. For vans the position is a 35% cut in 2030 and 80% in 2035. Electrive also noted that steel credits could count before 2035, capped at 3 points. The text must still pass Parliament’s plenary and be negotiated with the Council, where a qualified majority of at least 15 countries representing 65% of the EU population is needed. Electrive reported a Franco-German joint position for a 90% cut without compensation.

Until the process is complete, the existing targets stay in force; the IEA states this in its Global EV Outlook 2026 and the Commission’s page says the same. The European Environment Agency’s provisional data, published on 25 June 2026, give the average CO2 of new cars at 96.7 g per km in 2025, down from 106.7 g in 2024, with fully electric cars at 18.9% of new registrations in the EU, Norway and Iceland and plug-in hybrids at 9.7%. For 2025 to 2027 the 93.6 g per km target is assessed as a three-year average under Regulation 2025/1214, so a single-year figure above it is not by itself a breach.

Cyprus’s national targets and strategy for electric cars in Cyprus

The final 2024 NECP (version 1.5, 18 December 2024, in an English machine translation) describes a General Policy Framework for Promoting the Use of Electric Vehicles. Its fleet target is that 8% of the vehicle fleet, about 85,000 vehicles of all categories, new and second-hand, will be purely electric by 2030, with a target of 25% of new passenger cars and 17% of new light commercial vehicles in 2030 and 100% of all new vehicles in 2035. The plan reports the fleet at the time as 97.40% conventional vehicles, 2.38% hybrids and 0.21% electric, and sets the 2030 technology mix at 70.20% conventional, 21.80% hybrid and 8% electric. Its measures include purchase grants, a scheme to subsidise 1,000 charging points, and 60 electric buses that would make up 7% of the public bus fleet.

The plan also contains a less ambitious projection. Its existing-measures scenario puts the electric fleet at 42,090 vehicles in 2030, made up of 26,462 passenger cars, 453 buses, 2,069 motorcycles and 13,105 light trucks. The gap between that projection and the 85,000 target is the room the additional measures are meant to fill. The European Commission’s assessment of the plan, SWD(2025) 140, records Cyprus’s binding Effort Sharing target of a 32% cut by 2030 against 2005, notes that the plan’s projections reach a 25.9% cut, 6.1 points short, and says transport was the largest share of those emissions in 2022 at 46%, mainly because of private car use. It asks Cyprus to implement additional policies on decarbonising transport and reducing passenger vehicles.

The same targets were restated in 2026. In the Cyprus Mail of 5 July 2026, Transport Minister Alexis Vafeades was quoted as aiming for 85,000 electric vehicles by 2030, which would need about 15,000 new registrations a year. The report added that the government had announced a subsidy scheme running to 2030 but had released no details, and that a Road Transport Department official said no detailed information existed yet on eligibility or timeline. The Cyprus Mail also quoted the department’s figure of roughly 8,200 licensed electric vehicles of all types.

Electric cars in Cyprus: new registrations from 2021 to September 2026

Two different bases are used in published statistics, and mixing them produces apparent contradictions. CYSTAT counts every vehicle entered on the register in a period, whether it was new or used when registered, and it reports shares of passenger saloon cars. ACEA counts new cars only. A third base is the all-category total in CYSTAT-DB table 2230223E, which includes mopeds, vans and buses. The widely quoted figure of 1,322 electric registrations in 2023 belongs to that third base: it is 2.91% of the 45,494 vehicles of every category registered that year, new and used, not 2.91% of new cars. CYSTAT’s own passenger-car share for 2023 was 2.7%.

Sources for the table: CYSTAT-DB table 2230223E (registrations, retrieved 8 November 2026), and CYSTAT press releases of 10 January 2025, 12 January 2026 and 9 October 2026. The share column on the right differs from the all-category share because the press releases cover passenger saloon cars only. Used cars dominate that base: in 2025, 26,145 of the 40,778 passenger cars registered, or 64.1%, were used, and 14,633, or 35.9%, were new. In January to September 2026, CYSTAT reported 10,521 new and 23,635 used passenger saloon cars (30.8% and 69.2%). The EU CO2 regulation reaches the new share. Used cars brought in from other markets enter through national rules; the Cyprus Mail reported on 5 July 2026 that Cyprus restricts most imports of non-EU cars older than five years.

For new cars alone, ACEA’s tables give the following for Cyprus. In 2025, 1,474 battery-electric cars were registered, up 23.6% from 1,193 in 2024, within totals of 14,634 and 15,057. In January to September 2026, battery-electric registrations were 1,099, down 4.4% from 1,149 a year earlier, while total new-car registrations fell 10.9% from 11,804 to 10,518, so the battery-electric share rose from 9.73% to 10.45%. Plug-in hybrids were 647, hybrid-electric cars 5,485, petrol cars 3,131 and diesel cars 156.

Source: ACEA press release of 22 October 2026 (provisional data, which may be revised). Cyprus shares are calculated here as each count divided by 10,518. For other EU countries in the same period, ACEA’s table gives battery-electric shares of 7.10% for Greece (8,180 of 115,172), 40.38% for Malta (2,425 of 6,006) and 41.19% for the Netherlands (109,024 of 264,701), which shows how wide the range is within the EU. The deeper fuel-by-fuel tables, month-by-month CYSTAT releases and brand rankings are in the Cyprus electric vehicles guide and the Cyprus car market guide, and are not repeated here.

How many electric cars are on the road in Cyprus

Registrations are a flow; the fleet is a stock. CYSTAT-DB table 2230210E gives the licensed fleet by energy type. At the end of 2025 Cyprus had 667,841 licensed passenger cars: 465,414 petrol, 134,442 diesel, 62,198 hybrid (a category that includes plug-ins), 5,244 electric and 543 other. Electric cars were therefore 0.79% of the passenger-car fleet, up from 167 cars, or 0.03%, in 2019. Across all vehicle categories, electric vehicles rose from 505 in 2019 to 7,539 in 2025 out of 867,552 licensed.

Source: CYSTAT-DB table 2230210E, licensed vehicles, retrieved 8 November 2026; shares calculated here. Eurostat’s dataset road_eqs_carpda, as of 20 October 2026, shows the same Cyprus figures and allows a comparison with other countries at 31 December 2025. The EU-27 had 263,847,868 passenger cars, of which 7,592,725 were battery-electric (2.88%) and 4,979,202 plug-in hybrids (1.89%). Cyprus’s battery-electric share of 0.79% compares with 0.44% in Poland, 0.49% in Greece, 0.66% in Bulgaria, 7.23% in the Netherlands and 17.92% in Denmark, all calculated from the same Eurostat table.

A comparison with the NECP is possible because the plan published year-by-year projections. Summing the plan’s existing-measures table for passenger cars, buses, motorcycles and light trucks gives 4,560 electric vehicles for 2025 and 3,487 for 2024, against 7,539 and 5,334 licensed according to CYSTAT. The projections are for the fleet and CYSTAT counts licensed vehicles, so the two are close but not identical measures. The point is narrower than a verdict on the target: the early-years path ran above the existing-measures projection, while the 2030 aim of 85,000 depends on additions many times larger than anything yet recorded.

Age and ownership matter for the pace of change. ACEA’s report on vehicles on European roads, published in 2026 with 2024 data, gives Cyprus 647,327 cars with an average age of 14.4 years against 12.7 years for the EU, with 424,371 of them, or 65.6%, older than ten years. It also records 670 cars per 1,000 inhabitants in Cyprus against 570 in the EU, and shows 71.8% of Cyprus cars as petrol, 20.7% as diesel and 0.5% as battery-electric in 2024. Car ownership in Cyprus is analysed in the car ownership guide.

Fleet turnover: the arithmetic behind the question

A rule on new cars changes the fleet only as fast as the fleet is renewed. The simplest test divides the fleet by the number of cars entering it each year. The figures below use 2025 volumes and are arithmetic, not forecasts: they show how long replacement would take if the 2025 pace of registrations simply continued.

Read the rows as follows. If every new EU car sold from 1 January 2035 were zero-emission, ten years of sales at 2025 volumes would put about 108 million new cars on the road, which is 41% of today’s 263.8 million fleet, so the rest of the fleet would still be older vehicles in 2045. Replacing the whole fleet by new sales alone would take about 24 years at that pace, which points to a date in the 2050s. In Cyprus the same sum gives 45.6 years on new cars only; because used cars are 64% of registrations, the used market is where the fleet mix is actually decided, and EU CO2 rules on new cars do not cover it.

The same method tests the national targets. Moving from 7,539 electric vehicles at the end of 2025 to 85,000 at the end of 2030 needs 77,461 additions over five years, or 15,492 a year. The electric registrations of all categories in 2025 were 2,223, so the required pace is 7.0 times the 2025 pace. From the roughly 8,200 reported in mid-2026, 76,800 additions remain for the 4.5 years to the end of 2030, or about 17,070 a year. If 25% of the 14,634 new cars registered in 2025 were electric, that would be 3,659 cars, which is 2.5 times the 1,474 recorded. Even if every one of 14,634 new cars a year were electric from 2026, five years would add 73,170, below the 77,461 gap. The fleet target therefore assumes electric vans, motorcycles, buses and used imports as well as new cars.

The 85,000 figure is 8.06% of the 1,054,146 active registered vehicles of all kinds that the Cyprus Mail of 17 March 2025 cited, from the Registrar of Motor Vehicles, at 31 December 2024. Measured against the 867,552 vehicles that CYSTAT counted as licensed at the end of 2025, it equals 9.8%.

Grants for electric cars in Cyprus: what was offered and where it stands

Purchase grants have been run by the Road Transport Department of the Ministry of Transport, Communications and Works under the Electromobility Promotion Scheme, funded through the Recovery and Resilience Plan. The third call opened on 17 February 2024 on the department’s portal and was to close on 11 October 2024, or earlier if a category ran out, according to the Funding Programmes Portal. The Cyprus Mail of 20 February 2024 reported 2,254 applications within the first days, with the large-family and used-vehicle categories exhausted.

The fourth call, listed on the portal as closed, offered EUR 9,000 for a new private zero-emission vehicle, EUR 9,000 for a used private zero-emission vehicle, EUR 20,000 for a new zero-emission vehicle for eligible disabled users, EUR 20,000 for large families and EUR 15,000 for a new electric light commercial vehicle in category N1. Applicants could be individuals, companies, municipalities and non-profit bodies. Under Treasury Circular 3A of 14 August 2025, applicants with outstanding tax or social insurance debts had to settle them or agree an arrangement, with certificates due within eight working days of preliminary approval. After talks with EU authorities, verification moved from the payment stage to the completion of vehicle registration, which is why approved vehicles had until 30 June 2026.

The European Alternative Fuels Observatory page for Cyprus, as of 18 April 2025, listed further conditions of the scheme at that date: a vehicle price cap of EUR 80,000 including VAT for new private vehicles, a maximum age of three years for used vehicles that must be EU-registered, retention of the vehicle for two years (five for the social categories), and a EUR 7,500 scrapping add-on for plug-in hybrids emitting 50 g CO2 per km or less. The Cyprus Mail of 5 July 2026 summarised the outcomes: the third scheme paid EUR 9,000 grants for 1,827 new and 104 used zero-emission vehicles plus 1,228 grants of EUR 7,500 for trading in an old car, and the fourth scheme provided 520 grants of EUR 9,000 or more, with funding of EUR 5.6 million. The trade body Semio was quoted as seeking annual subsidies of EUR 15 million to EUR 20 million.

Road tax and tax rules for electric cars in Cyprus

Annual road tax (the circulation fee) for passenger cars registered since 2019 follows a CO2 formula in the Motor Vehicles and Road Traffic (Amending) Law 47(I)/2019, published on 29 March 2019 and available on CyLaw. The tax is the sum of the CO2 grams in each band multiplied by a rate: EUR 0.50 per gram up to 120 g per km, EUR 3.00 per gram from 120 to 150 g, EUR 5.00 per gram from 150 to 180 g and EUR 10.00 per gram above 180 g, with a cap of EUR 1,500. A car emitting 0 g per km therefore owes no tax under the formula, and the NECP states that zero-emission vehicles have zero road taxes and that a larger electric fleet will reduce public revenue from them.

The worked rows apply the law’s table; the law also adds amounts tied to the Euro emissions standard for cars registered for the first time, which are separate from this formula. The formula applies to cars registered after the law took effect, and the Road Transport Department’s pages state the rules for each case. A fuller treatment of road tax, instalments and inspection rules is in the car market guide.

A further cost signal comes from the EU’s emissions trading for fuels. The Commission states that the second emissions trading system (ETS2), covering buildings and road transport fuels, becomes fully operational in 2028, and the Cyprus Mail of 5 July 2026 quoted a Road Transport Department official expecting it to raise road fuel costs. The NECP lists the revised emissions trading system among the measures expected to raise transport fuel prices.

Charging network and the rules that set its size

According to a Transport Ministry letter dated 7 October 2026 and reported by the Cyprus Mail on 23 October 2026, Cyprus has 384 publicly accessible charging points at 221 stations. The same letter sets out a plan for 94 new fast charging points at a total cost of EUR 10 million: 76 for light vehicles at 150 kW each and 18 for heavy vehicles, of which 12 are rated 350 kW and 6 are rated 200 kW. The timetable is 16 light-vehicle points in 2026, 48 light-vehicle and 12 heavy-vehicle points in 2027, and the rest in 2028. Light-vehicle sites include urban hubs in Nicosia, Larnaca and Limassol and locations such as Alambra, Kofinou, Evrychou, Saittas, Mandria, Polis Chrysochous and Paralimni.

The letter also lists completed work: ten fast-charging stations in public areas costing EUR 840,660 under the Recovery and Resilience Plan, and 212 charging points installed between 2022 and 2026 in public areas, businesses and local authorities under the “Electricity with 1000” sponsorship plan. The ministry additionally supports private charging at homes and businesses that can use solar power.

The size of the network is guided by the EU’s Alternative Fuels Infrastructure Regulation, Regulation (EU) 2023/1804, which applies from 13 April 2024. Article 3 requires, at the end of each year from 2024, cumulative publicly accessible power of at least 1.3 kW per registered battery-electric light-duty vehicle and 0.80 kW per registered plug-in hybrid. On the passenger-car numbers above, 5,244 battery-electric cars give 6,817 kW and 2,498 plug-in hybrids give 1,998 kW, a total of about 8,815 kW; vans count too, so the real requirement is higher. At 85,000 battery-electric vehicles the same rate gives 110,500 kW. For scale, the 76 planned light-vehicle points at 150 kW add 11,400 kW. The regulation also sets pool power on the main road network: 400 kW per pool by 31 December 2025 and 600 kW by 31 December 2027 on the core network, with pools no more than 60 km apart.

The electricity grid and renewables behind electric cars in Cyprus

An electric car is as low-carbon as the electricity that charges it, and the Cyprus system is an isolated one. The Commission’s guidance on the NECP asks Cyprus to speed up the Great Sea Interconnector so that it is complete by 2030, because it would end the country’s energy isolation. Eurostat’s renewable energy dataset nrg_ind_ren, as of 15 September 2026, shows how the electricity mix has changed.

The NECP’s 2030 contributions are 33.17% of gross final energy, 37.6% of electricity and 18.6% of transport, the last on the assumption that 85,000 electric vehicles are in use. Solar dominates new capacity, and the constraint is as much the grid as generation. According to CyprusGrid data reported by pv magazine on 13 January 2026, 306 GWh of generation from distribution-connected plants was curtailed in 2025, equal to about 47.4% of the output of those solar and biogas plants, against 166,997 MWh, or about 29%, in 2024. The article said Cyprus has no large-scale battery storage and that a storage subsidy launched in February 2025 had been followed by no progress report from the ministry.

Charging demand is small beside that volume. The NECP’s existing-measures projection (42,090 electric vehicles in 2030) puts electricity use in transport at 110 GWh, or 2% of total final electricity demand. That is 36% of the 306 GWh curtailed in 2025, though the two figures refer to different years and bases and are compared here only for scale. The plan says a higher share of electric vehicles may create grid challenges as well as opportunities, since charging is concentrated at certain hours, and that smart charging and vehicle-to-grid use could support the system.

The global answer: will every car be electric?

The IEA Global EV Outlook 2026, published on 20 May 2026, reports that electric car sales grew 20% in 2025 to more than 20 million, one in four new cars sold worldwide, and that about 5% of the global car stock is now electrified. It describes sales in China of more than 13 million (a share of almost 55%), Europe of about 4.2 million (28%), the EU of almost 3 million (just under 27%) and the United States of about 1.5 million (roughly 10%). The IEA’s press release gave 2026 sales of 23 million, close to 30% of all cars sold. The IEA counts battery-electric and plug-in hybrid cars together, which is a wider definition than the battery-electric figures in the ACEA tables above.

These are scenario results with a stated method: the IEA’s Current Policies Scenario and Stated Policies Scenario use policies in place or announced up to the end of March 2026. Under both, electric vehicles are a minority of all vehicles on the road in 2035, at about 22% to over 25%. The IEA reports that conventional car sales never return to their 2017 peak and that electric cars exceed 90% of sales in China by 2035. For the EU, it models electric light-duty vehicle sales rising from about 25% today to over 90% by 2035 in the Stated Policies Scenario, which reflects the Commission’s December 2025 proposal, and to nearly 100% in the Current Policies Scenario, which keeps the current 100% standard. In the Stated Policies Scenario conventional cars, including hybrids, keep under 10% of EU sales beyond 2035.

The fleet figures add the turnover logic to the sales figures. By Eurostat, battery-electric cars were 2.88% of the EU passenger-car fleet at the end of 2025, even though ACEA reports 17.4% of new cars that year (1,880,370 of 10,822,831). The difference is the time it takes for sales to become stock. In 2025 the EU battery-electric stock rose by 1,818,546 cars, from 5,774,179 to 7,592,725. Cyprus is at an earlier point on the same curve: a 0.79% fleet share, a 10.07% new-car share and a fleet that is 14.4 years old on average.

Charging rules in buildings and where to find the property data

Charging provisions in buildings are set at EU level by Article 14 of the recast Energy Performance of Buildings Directive, Directive (EU) 2024/1275. For new non-residential buildings and major renovations with more than five parking spaces it requires one charging point for every five spaces and pre-cabling for at least 50% of spaces; for new residential buildings with more than three spaces it requires pre-cabling for at least 50% of spaces and at least one charging point. For existing non-residential buildings with more than 20 spaces, one charging point for every ten spaces, or ducting for at least 50% of spaces, is due by 1 January 2027. The Cyprus Mail reported on 5 July 2026 that a Cyprus law effective from early 2025 requires non-residential buildings with more than 20 parking spaces to install at least one charging point.

How those provisions appear in new Cyprus schemes can be checked against permit and market data. The Cyprus building permits guide sets out CYSTAT permit statistics and rules, the real estate statistics guide covers prices and transactions to October 2026, and the tourism trends guide covers the visitor volumes that feed the rental-car fleet, which accounted for 3,780 of the passenger cars registered in January to September 2026 (down 17.1%, per CYSTAT). Area pages for Nicosia, Limassol and Paphos and the Southern Cyprus country page list properties by location.

Frequently Asked Questions

Will all cars in Cyprus be electric by 2035?

The arithmetic of the fleet points the other way. The 2035 date applies to new cars sold, not to cars already registered. At the 2025 rate of 14,633 new passenger cars a year, replacing the 667,841-car fleet through new-car sales alone would take about 45.6 years, and the IEA’s scenarios have electric vehicles at about 22% to over 25% of all vehicles on the road worldwide in 2035. A policy aim of all new vehicles being electric in 2035 is in the Cyprus NECP; the share of electric cars in Cyprus was 0.79% of the fleet at the end of 2025.

Is the 2035 target a Cyprus law?

The legal basis is EU Regulation 2023/851, which amended Regulation 2019/631. It sets an EU fleet-wide average for each manufacturer and does not give Cyprus a national quota. The Cyprus NECP and a government statement of 6 February 2024 express the national aim for electric cars in Cyprus, but the plan is a policy document submitted to the Commission.

Has the EU dropped the 2035 rule?

Not as of 8 November 2026. The change under discussion affects the rule that shapes new electric cars in Cyprus and in every other EU market. The Commission proposed on 16 December 2025 a 90% reduction with credits for the remainder, and Parliament’s environment committee voted on 4 November 2026 for 95% with up to 7.5 points of steel credit. Both are positions in a procedure that still needs a plenary vote and agreement with the Council, and the current law stays in force until then.

How many electric cars are there in Cyprus?

CYSTAT counted 5,244 licensed electric passenger cars at the end of 2025, and 7,539 electric vehicles of all categories. A Road Transport Department official quoted by the Cyprus Mail on 5 July 2026 gave roughly 8,200 licensed electric vehicles of all types. The NECP target for electric cars in Cyprus and other vehicles is about 85,000 by 2030.

What share of new cars in Cyprus are electric?

For new electric cars in Cyprus, ACEA reports 10.07% of new cars in 2025 as battery-electric (1,474 of 14,634) and 10.45% in January to September 2026 (1,099 of 10,518), against 22.7% for the EU. CYSTAT’s separate figure of 4.2% for January to September 2026 covers passenger cars registered new or used, so the two should not be compared directly.

Is there a grant for electric cars in Cyprus now?

The latest grant call for electric cars in Cyprus, the fourth under the Electromobility Promotion Scheme, is listed as closed on the Funding Programmes Portal, with registration of approved vehicles due by 30 June 2026. The Cyprus Mail reported on 5 July 2026 that a scheme running to 2030 had been announced without details. The last call paid EUR 9,000 for a new or used private zero-emission vehicle.

Do electric cars in Cyprus pay road tax?

Road tax for electric cars in Cyprus follows the CO2 formula in Law 47(I)/2019: a car with 0 g of CO2 per km owes EUR 0 in annual road tax. The NECP states that zero-emission vehicles have zero road taxes. The formula charges EUR 90 for a 130 g per km car and EUR 500 for a 200 g per km car.

How many public chargers are there in Cyprus?

Charging for electric cars in Cyprus relies on a network of 384 publicly accessible charging points at 221 stations, according to a Transport Ministry letter of 7 October 2026. The ministry plans 94 more fast points costing EUR 10 million between 2026 and 2028, according to the Cyprus Mail of 23 October 2026.

Can existing petrol and diesel cars still be driven after 2035?

The text of Regulation 2019/631 covers new passenger cars registered in the Union for the first time and contains no provision about cars already on the road. Rules for road use and used-car imports are set nationally, and the Road Transport Department publishes those for Cyprus. That is why the 2035 rule for new electric cars in Cyprus and other markets does not by itself remove petrol or diesel cars that are already registered.

What does the IEA say about electric cars worldwide?

The IEA Global EV Outlook 2026 gives the world context for electric cars in Cyprus. It reports that electric cars were 25% of global sales in 2025, more than 20 million cars, and that about 5% of the global car stock is electrified. In its scenarios the EV fleet excluding two- and three-wheelers reaches as many as 510 million by 2035 from nearly 80 million, and electric cars account for around 50% of global car sales in 2035.

Last checked: 8 November 2026. Sources: Regulation (EU) 2023/851; Regulation (EU) 2019/631; Regulation (EU) 2025/1214; European Parliament Legislative Train; European Commission, car and van CO2 standards; Electrive, 5 November 2026; Euronews, 4 November 2026; European Environment Agency; ACEA, September 2026; ACEA, December 2025; ACEA, vehicles on European roads 2026; CYSTAT, September 2026; CYSTAT, December 2025; CYSTAT, December 2024; CYSTAT-DB table 2230210E; Eurostat road_eqs_carpda; Eurostat nrg_ind_ren; Cyprus final 2024 NECP; Commission SWD(2025) 140, Cyprus; CyLaw, Law 47(I)/2019; Funding Programmes Portal, fourth call; Fast Forward, 1 December 2025; Fast Forward, 13 May 2025; European Alternative Fuels Observatory, Cyprus; Cyprus Mail, 6 February 2024; Cyprus Mail, 20 February 2024; Cyprus Mail, 17 March 2025; Cyprus Mail, 25 June 2025; Cyprus Mail, 5 July 2026; Cyprus Mail, 23 October 2026; Regulation (EU) 2023/1804; Directive (EU) 2024/1275; European Commission, ETS2; pv magazine, 13 January 2026; IEA Global EV Outlook 2026; IEA press release, 20 May 2026.