An electric car is no longer necessarily the most expensive option at a car dealership. Battery prices are falling, competition is increasing, and Chinese manufacturers are rapidly changing the economics of the global market. This is already beginning to show in Serbia.
In the first six months of 2026, 535 new fully electric passenger cars were registered in Serbia for the first time. During the same period last year, there were just 161. That represents a 232.3% increase in one year. The numbers are still small compared with Europe, but the change is significant. In the first half of this year, electric cars reached a 2.74% share of Serbia’s new passenger-car market. A year earlier, their share was below 1%.
Average electric car costs $37,000
A new analysis by Mobility Global has reignited the debate over prices. According to data reported by Kamatica, the average global price of an electric car fell to around $37,000 in 2025. The average price of a hybrid reached around $39,000. Since 2020, the average price of electric cars has fallen by around 9%. Over the same period, hybrids have become approximately 16% more expensive. The main reason is the battery.
According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), average battery prices fell by another 8% in 2025 alone. More efficient production, new battery chemistries and intense competition among manufacturers all contributed to the decline. The less a battery costs, the more room manufacturers have to cut the price of the car. And that is exactly what is happening now.
However, electric cars are not cheaper everywhere
The global average can be misleading. Much of the decline in prices is coming from China, the world’s largest electric-car market. The IEA estimates that nearly 70% of electric cars sold in China in 2025 were cheaper than comparable internal-combustion-engine cars, even before government incentives.
Europe has not reached that point yet. The IEA says the average price premium for a fully electric car in Europe was around 20% in 2025 compared with a comparable conventionally powered car. For electric SUVs, the gap narrowed to around 10%.
So the claim that “an electric car is now cheaper than a hybrid” is accurate when looking at a particular global average, but it does not mean that a buyer in Serbia or Germany will automatically pay less for every electric model. The real trend is different: the price gap is narrowing rapidly.
What can you buy in Serbia today?
The change is most visible among the cheapest models.
In Serbia, Dacia currently offers the Spring from €17,990 as part of its current offer. This means that an electric car has effectively entered the price range in which buyers have traditionally looked for small petrol cars.
Another important example is the BYD Dolphin Surf. Its starting price in Serbia is €23,990. The Boost version has a 43.2 kWh battery and a combined WLTP range of 322 kilometres. BYD is particularly important because it shows what Chinese competition is doing to European manufacturers. The Dolphin Surf is the European version of the model known as the Seagull. When the model was launched in Europe, Reuters reported that its Chinese counterpart was the second-best-selling battery-electric car in China, with more than 442,000 registrations in 2024.
The Citroën ë-C3 is also available on the Serbian market, with a declared WLTP range of up to 326 kilometres. Citroën developed the model from the outset with the aim of lowering the entry price for an electric car.
There is also the Renault 5 E-Tech electric, with a range of up to 410 kilometres, as well as a growing number of Chinese models.
The market, therefore, is no longer limited to cars costing €40,000, €50,000 or €60,000. That is a major change.
Which Are the Best-Selling Electric Cars?
On the European market, Tesla no longer has a monopoly on electrification. The Tesla Model Y nevertheless remained the best-selling individual electric model in Europe in 2025, with just over 150,000 registrations, according to JATO Dynamics data. The Škoda Elroq made a strong push behind it, while the Tesla Model 3 also remained among the leading models.
The much bigger change came among manufacturers. In 2025, Volkswagen overtook Tesla to become Europe’s best-selling brand of fully electric cars. Volkswagen sold 274,278 BEVs, an increase of 56%. Tesla ended the year with 236,357 cars, with sales down 27%. This shows that an electric-vehicle buyer is no longer almost automatically a Tesla customer.
Renault, Volkswagen, Škoda, BMW, Hyundai, Kia and Chinese manufacturers are offering an increasing number of models. Competition is therefore putting downward pressure on prices.
And then came BYD
The biggest disruption, however, is coming from China. BYD overtook Tesla in 2025 and became the world’s largest seller of fully electric cars. Tesla delivered around 1.64 million vehicles last year, 8.6% fewer than in 2024.
Chinese manufacturers have one important advantage: they can offer a large number of models across very different price categories. The IEA says the small BYD Seagull had already sold around 440,000 units in 2024, while the Tesla Model Y reached around 485,000 sales on the Chinese market.
That price competition is now reaching Serbia as well. BYD is a good indicator of the speed of change. In the first six months of 2026, the brand registered 772 passenger cars in Serbia, placing it among the ten best-selling brands on the market. It is important, however, to make a distinction: those 772 vehicles are not all fully electric, as BYD also sells plug-in hybrid models in Serbia.
Publicly available aggregate data from the Serbian Association of Vehicle Importers do not provide a sufficiently precise ranking of electric-vehicle sales by individual model.
Serbia goes from 161 to 535 cars
The most interesting aspect is the pace of change. In the first six months of 2024, 116 new fully electric passenger cars were registered in Serbia. A year later, there were 161. And in the first six months of 2026, there were already 535. In just two years, the number of newly registered electric cars in the first half of the year increased more than fourfold.
The comparison of market shares is even more striking. During the first nine months of 2024, electric cars accounted for approximately 1% of new registrations in Serbia. In the first six months of 2026, they reached 2.74%. Serbia is therefore seeing clear growth in electric-vehicle sales, but it is starting from a very low base.
Hybrids are the real winners in Serbia for now
There is an even more important figure. Serbian buyers are currently switching to hybrids much faster than to fully electric cars. In the first half of 2026, 7,245 cars combining petrol and electric power and 1,266 diesel hybrids were registered for the first time. Hybrids together accounted for 43.62% of the new passenger-car market. Petrol cars fell to 41.85%. Fully electric cars account for 2.74%.
This perhaps best describes the stage Serbia is currently going through. Buyers are ready for electrification but not everyone is yet ready to give up the petrol pump completely.
The State offers up to €5,000
Price could provide an additional boost to demand. Serbia has allocated 170 million dinars for electric-vehicle subsidies for 2026. Support ranges from €250 to €5,000, depending on the vehicle category. Applications for the programme are submitted electronically through the eUprava portal during 2026. For vehicles in the lower-priced segment, a subsidy of several thousand euros is no small amount. For a vehicle costing around €20,000 to €25,000, it can significantly change the buyer’s calculations. Especially when lower energy costs and simpler maintenance of an electric powertrain are taken into account.
Europe is accelerating even faster
Serbia nevertheless remains far behind the European Union average. In 2025, 1.88 million fully electric cars were registered in the EU. Their market share reached 17.4%. In the first quarter of 2026, the share had already risen to 19.4%. According to data Reuters published in July, more than 1.24 million battery-electric cars were registered across 17 European markets in the first half of 2026, 33.7% more than a year earlier. At 2.74%, Serbia is still far from these levels. But the direction is the same.
What does the price decline mean for Serbia?
Until now, the biggest obstacle to electric cars in Serbia has been their upfront price. If that price approaches the cost of a petrol or hybrid car, the purchasing equation changes. The buyer no longer asks: “How much more do I have to pay to drive an electric car?” They start calculating: “Which car will cost me less over five or seven years of use?” That is a much more difficult equation for conventional cars.
Additional pressure will come from another direction. Used electric cars that were sold in Germany, France, the Netherlands, Norway and other European countries in previous years are gradually entering the secondary market. The IEA says that more than three million used electric cars were sold in 2025 across the major markets of China, the United States and the five leading European countries alone, 35% more than a year earlier. For Serbia, where used cars traditionally make up a huge part of the market, this wave could prove decisive.
Electric cars are no longer exotic
In 2019, only a few dozen fully electric cars were sold annually in Serbia. Today, more than 500 are registered in six months. That is still a small number in a country dominated by used cars, petrol and diesel vehicles and, increasingly, hybrids. But a combination of three factors is changing the market. Batteries are cheaper. The range of models is much wider. And Chinese manufacturers have lowered the entry price into the world of electric cars. The Dacia Spring at under €18,000 and the BYD Dolphin Surf at around €24,000 show that this change is already visible in Serbian price lists.
So perhaps the most important news is not that the average electric car in the world has become cheaper than the average hybrid. Much more important is that the electric car is slowly ceasing to be a luxury purchase. When that happens in markets such as Serbia as well, growth from a few hundred vehicles a year could very quickly turn into several thousand. And the data from the first half of 2026 show that this process has already begun.
Source: Bonitet.com, 17.08.2026