The popularity of petrol is waning
February saw continued growth in the number of electric cars being bought in the UK. 18% of all new cars bought across the UK were fully electric up from 7% of new cars last year. This rapid growth demonstrates the continued popularity of electric cars, while the declining market share and number of petrol cars being sold shows the waning popularity of conventional internal combustion engines.
Ben Nelmes, Head of Policy and Research at New AutoMotive, said:
“Our latest electric car sales data shows that more consumers than ever are choosing to buy electric cars and EV market share has more than doubled since February 2021.”
“It’s great to see so many motorists discovering the benefits of electric cars, particularly the savings people can make on fuel at a time of rising petrol and diesel prices.”
“The biggest barrier today is the limited supply of vehicles and people are being put off by long waiting lists. This means people might stick with their old polluting car or, worse, buy a new petrol or diesel car and lock in another 14 years of pollution before the car is scrapped.”
“Manufacturers need to increase the supply of pure electric vehicles to the UK, but they need Ministers to adopt an ambitious California-style ZEV mandate that prioritises and instils confidence in UK-based manufacturing.”
The full data release is available here. You can view the data on our interactive dashboard, here.
UK market overview
Electric cars remain the fastest growing segment of the UK car market and petrol’s waning popularity has kept that fuel type’s market share below 50%.
Regional highlights
The Peterborough DLVA area (which includes Cambridgeshire), has knocked Oxfordshire into second place in our league of the UK’s EV hotspots. EV registrations have rocketed in the East of England in the last 6 months. In the summer of 2021, less than 1 in ten new cars bought was an EV, now it is almost 1 in 3.
We track regional registrations using a three-month rolling average, which masks big variations in EV market share from month to month. The DVLA areas and regions with the highest share of EVs are as follows:
Peterborough (inc. Cambridgeshire) - 38%
Maidstone (covering all of Kent) - 36%
Oxfordshire - 36%
Bristol - 29%
Newcastle - 25%
London - 24%
Refer to tables 4 & 5 for full regional statistics.
The race for EV market share
Unlike last February, Tesla made a slew of deliveries in February, with 1 in four new EVs being a Tesla. However, many of the volume manufacturers continue to compete for a slice of the market for new EVs, with no other manufacturer taking more than 10% of the market.
For the full data, and year-on-year comparisons, refer to table 1 in the full release.
The brands who are quickest to electrify
Jaguar continued to make good progress towards all-electric sales, with two in three new Jaguars being fully electric. This should help its owners, Jaguar Land Rover meet its emissions performance targets, but could be outweighed by its other brand, Land Rover, continuing to make very slow progress in electrifying its sales. Of the volume brands, Hyundai sold the most EVs as a proportion of its total sales while its sister brand Kia was not far behind.
For the full data, refer to table 2 in the full release.
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 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.
