The sale of new electric cars rose by 60% year-on-year in April, as Britons continue to flock to make the switch to cheaper, greener electric transport. Around 16% of all new cars were electric. Across all fuel types, the new car market grew by roughly 10% overall, continuing the steady recovery that began in February, with this growth largely being driven by a 60% increase in new EV registrations.

⚡ What Our Data Shows

Ben Nelmes, Chief Executive Officer at New AutoMotive, said: "It is fantastic to see such strong growth in sales of electric cars since a year ago. Electric cars accounted for almost 16% of all new registrations in April 2023, which represents a staggering 60% rise in the number of electric vehicles sold."

“The shift towards electric vehicles is not just about reducing climate risk; it's about benefiting motorists. British drivers increasingly understand making the switch to an electric vehicle is beneficial for them - they are cheaper to run, require less maintenance, and improve local air quality.”

"We are pleased that the government's latest proposals for a Zero Emissions Vehicle (ZEV) Mandate - a policy we have been calling for - are set to increase the supply of electric vehicles, enabling more people to access the benefits of going electric. However, Ministers should not be complacent. The government should monitor the market and raise targets if manufacturers are able to increase the supply of electric cars even further."

The full data release is available here. You can view the data on our interactive dashboard, here.

📈 UK market overview

Electric was the only fuel type to see growth both in terms of market share and actual sales volume compared to April 2022. New electric sales accounted for around 16% of all new registrations, up around 5 percentage points year-on-year, and experienced a roughly 60% increase in actual sales volume. Hybrids remained stagnant, at around 25% market share. Petrol’s market share fell around 3 percentage points, despite an increase in sales volume, whilst diesel was the only major fuel type to see a drop both in market share and sales volume.

Table 3 provides a full UK market overview, and will be updated from 3rd of the month, or the next working day after that.

📊 ZEV Mandate: State of the Market

Following the publication of the government’s latest plans for a Zero Emissions Vehicle (ZEV) Mandate, we will be tracking how manufacturers are performing against the first year’s target. The ZEV Mandate will begin next year with a target for each manufacturer’s sales to be 22% fully electric in the calendar year 2024. At the heart of the ZEV mandate is a trading system, in which manufacturers trade credits (aka allowances), which they must use to meet their targets.

Overall market credit surplus/deficit: -44,422 credits

We estimate that the 32 makes that are eligible for inclusion in the ZEV Mandate would collectively be 44,422 credits short of meeting their regulatory requirements if the 2024 target were in force in the last 12 months. That would mean they would have to either borrow or buy out of their regulatory obligations. Given that the whole market is in deficit, the cost of a credit would be equal to the buy-out price of £15,000 per credit.

🚗 Individual Manufacturer ZEV Mandate Performance

The 32 manufacturers who will be regulated by the ZEV mandate are shown below, with their individual credit balances before and after the proposed CO2 flexibilities are applied. Tesla, MG, Polestar, Cupra, Jaguar, Porsche, Fiat, Renault, and Volvo look set to be net beneficiaries of the ZEV mandate, while Ford, Toyota, and most others still have work to do to meet their 2024 targets.

📌 Regional highlights

Roughly one in every two new cars registered in Oxfordshire in April were fully electric, as the area continues to be a hotspot for clean transport within the UK. Wimbledon comes in second this month, with one third of new registrations being electric, whilst Birmingham comes in at third place, with just under one in four of its new car sales being for a battery electric vehicle.

Oxfordshire - 49%
Wimbledon - 33%
Birmingham - 23%
Peterborough - 22%
Newcastle - 22%
Manchester - 20%

Refer to tables 4 & 5 for full regional statistics, and will be updated from 3rd of the month, or the next working day after that.

🚗 The race for EV market share

The race for a share of the ever-growing electric car market in the UK is heating up. April saw a highly competitive top-ten begin to pull away, with the difference in market share between first place Volkswagen (around 10% of the market) and tenth placed Mercedes-Benz (just under 6% of the market) being around 4 percentage points. Every manufacturer who made the top ten of this table sold at least 1,000 electric cars in April - raising the bar in the competition for a slice of the electric market. Tesla were knocked down to third place, despite usually dominating this table in months where they make deliveries, with Volkswagen and MG claiming first and second respectively. Tesla’s relative struggle for market share this month is further evidence that competition for a share of the electric car market is becoming more and more fierce.

For the full data, and year-on-year comparisons, refer to table 1 in the full release, which will be available from 3rd of the month, or the next working day after that.

📊 The brands who are quickest to electrify

Once again, the performance of the top ten manufacturers for this table indicates that competition between manufacturers to embrace the UK’s transition to electric transport is heating up. To make the top ten for April, manufacturers must have ensured at least one in five of each of their sales for the month was for a fully electric vehicle, with 22% of tenth placed Volvo’s April sales being for an electric car. Volvo’s year-on-year growth (from just 7% of their sales in April last year being electric to around 22% this month) reflects the company's commitment to ensuring 50% of its sales globally are fully electric by 2025. Whilst lower volume manufacturers dominated the top two spots, with Genesis (66% of all sales fully electric) and Jaguar (41% of all sales fully electric) in first and second space respectively, higher volume manufacturers like MG, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, and Hyundai also made the top ten.

We exclude brands that are 100% electric from this table since they do not need to electrify their sales. For the full data, refer to table 2 in the full release, which will be available from 3rd of the month, or the next working day after that.

About Electric Car Count

Electric Car Count is a monthly data series from New AutoMotive, a not-for-profit independent transport research organisation with a mission to accelerate and support the UK’s transition to electric vehicles. You can find out more about New AutoMotive by visiting www.newautomotive.org/mission

Electric Car Count provides an overview of the newly licensed passenger cars. It is released monthly, in the first few days of each month, providing data on the previous month’s newly licensed cars. In the UK, vehicles must be licensed (also known as registered) to be legally driven on UK roads.

We provide an overview of the state of the market, showing the number of cars registered by each manufacturer, broken down by fuel type. This provides a new way to track the transition to EVs in the UK.

Visit our interactive data dashboard here: www.newautomotive.org/ecc

For more background information on the statistics we provide, you can read our blog about the race for EV market share: www.newautomotive.org/blog/the-race-for-ev-market-share-is-under-way

Data sources & methodology

The data is shows the number of type M1 vehicles (i.e. passenger cars) in the DVLA’s vehicle licensing database as it stands on, or shortly after, the 1st day of the month. The DVLA’s vehicle licensing database is the legal record of all vehicles licensed for use in the UK. We obtain the data from the DVLA’s vehicle enquiry service API, and the DVSA’s MOT history API.

The data covers all cars with a standard form UK vehicle registration mark (VRM, i.e. the vehicle’s number plate), but does not capture any vehicles with personalised VRMs.

Terminology

We use the following terms to refer to vehicle fuel types:

Pure electric: battery electric, or other purely electric-powered vehicles (such as hydrogen). These are vehicles where the drivetrain of the vehicle is only electric, with no facility to drive using a fossil fuelled engine.

Hybrid: vehicles that have the ability to drive under electric power or under fossil fuel power. These include vehicles classified by the DVLA as “hybrid electric”, “electric diesel”, for example.

Q&A

Why are the numbers different from other organisations, such as the SMMT?

Our numbers are typically slightly different from those published by the SMMT. We cannot speculate as to why this is because the SMMT do not publish the methodology for obtaining their vehicle data.

Our data is based on the DVLA’s legal record of vehicles licensed as it stands on the first of the month.

Our methodology does not capture newly registered vehicles with a personalised number plate. These take longer to appear in our database, and are not included in the monthly release. We do not believe that these are a statistically significant part of the market.

Will you make this data open and accessible to more organisations?

Yes, we are happy to supply the data to anyone where doing so will not conflict with our mission. We encourage people to reach out to us on data@newautomotive.org.

EV Uptake Surges 60% Year-on-Year