BEV registrations are on the rise
April saw further evidence that more manufacturers are racing to secure a share of the market for new EVs. New AutoMotive’s monthly data release, the Electric Car Count, which tracks new car registrations in Great Britain, shows that the market for new EVs is distributed between an increasing number of manufacturers.
Ben Nelmes, Head of Policy at New AutoMotive, said:
“The race for EV market share is on. We’re seeing an increasing number of car manufacturers trying secure market share. This is good news for consumers: it means more choice of electric cars for those wishing to make the switch and access all the benefits of owning an EV.”
Top ten: the race for market share
This table shows the manufacturers who registered the most EVs in the month in question and thereby secured the biggest share of the market for new EVs.
Top ten manufacturers electrifying the quickest?
This table ranks manufacturers based on who has sold the most EVs as a percentage of all the cars they’ve sold. (It will exclude any manufacturers that only sell EVs, e.g. Tesla).
Market Overview: April ‘21
Notes
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 cars for the previous month. 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/market-data
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 GB vehicle registration mark (VRM, i.e. the vehicle’s number plate), but does not capture any vehicles with personalised VRMs or which were registered in Northern Ireland, meaning there may appear to be slight discrepancies with other similar data series.
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.
Why do the numbers only reflect Great Britain and not Northern Ireland?
Our methodology can only find vehicles with a standard-form GB number plate. In Great Britain, newly licensed vehicles are assigned a number plate which follows a particular format. You can find out more about how number plates are constructed here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/955014/vehicle-registration-numbers-and-number-plates-inf104.pdf
