Rising transport emissions undermine urban sustainability goals, exposing a widening gap between climate ambition and emissions trajectories. Amid these trends, in the European Union (EU), electric vehicles account for only a very small proportion of new registrations for Light Commercial Vehicles (LCVs), below the levels seen in the passenger vehicles segment. While previous studies have investigated country-specific factors, this research adopts a macro-level perspective by examining aggregate diffusion patterns of electric Light Commercial Vehicles (eLCVs) across 27 EU member states. To identify the underlying determinants of this variation, this study employed a series of panel data regression models to evaluate how a set of socioeconomic, energy, mobility, and innovation-related variables shape eLCV diffusion and, more specifically, to assess the explanatory power of these variables. Among the models tested, the Fixed Effects Model proves to be most effective in capturing these relationships, reinforcing the value of a multifactorial approach to understanding eLCV adoption dynamics. The findings enhance the understanding of structural diffusion patterns and provide an empirical basis for better aligning policy and industry efforts with the EU’s regional decarbonisation objectives.

Many EU countries have used financial incentives to promote electric light commercial vehicles and decarbonise urban freight transport. However, the high costs of electric light commercial vehicles still pose a significant adoption barrier. This paper evaluates the impact of financial incentives on the total cost of ownership of electric light commercial vehicles in the European Union and their role in achieving the cost-competitiveness of electric vehicles. A pairwise comparison is performed for three weight categories of electric and diesel vehicles in twelve countries. Our analysis shows that financial incentives have a high impact on the total cost of ownership and have proven necessary to achieve electric vehicles' cost-competitiveness in most cases. However, in specific cases, financial incentives may no longer be needed as the cost of electric vehicles' ownership would have been lower than diesel vehicles even without them. This paper demonstrates the importance of adjusting government incentives to avoid unnecessary funding allocations while promoting the decarbonisation of light commercial vehicles, particularly as the number of incentives does not directly correlate with electric vehicles penetration.