A joint analysis by E-Mobility Europe and Ember finds that meeting the EU’s 2030 electric vehicle (EV) deployment targets could avoid 190 million barrels of oil imports annually, generating approximately €12bn (US$13.92bn) in savings. Those targets require 35 million battery electric vehicles (BEVs), three million commercial vehicles and 200,000 electric trucks to be on Europe’s roads by 2030.

In 2025, BEVs registered across the EU displaced 57 million barrels of oil, avoiding approximately €4bn (US$4.64bn) of wealth transfer outside the bloc. Already in 2026, one million newly registered vehicles have cut consumption by a further four million barrels.

The analysis sets out five priorities for delivering EV energy security: deploying more EVs, strengthening Europe’s EV industrial base, making electricity the affordable fuel of transport, turning EVs into energy assets and securing the digital backbone of mobility. The report calls for the European Commission’s upcoming Electrification Action Plan to put Europe on an irreversible electrification path.

In a statement, Chris Heron, Secretary General, E-Mobility Europe, said: “Europe must decide: do we continue to relinquish our strategic autonomy to other regions, or will we act with laser focus to capture the full benefits of electric security? As a continent, we need to decide who we want to be, get back in the EV driving seat, and deliver long-term resilience.”

Why this matters:

• The energy security framing is deliberately timed.Publishing an oil displacement analysis as the EU debates whether to soften CO2 standards reframes the electrification debate from industrial competitiveness—where Chinese competition has put European OEMs on the defensive—to strategic autonomy, an argument that carries considerably more political weight in the current geopolitical climate.
• The gap between 2025 actuals and 2030 targets illustrates how much of the savings are still contingent.Displacing 67 million barrels today against a 190 million barrel target by 2030 requires roughly tripling the current EV fleet in five years—a trajectory that depends on CO2 standards remaining unchanged at a moment when several member states are actively lobbying for flexibility.