The number of people buying EVs has doubled in the last year
The number of people buying electric cars has doubled in the last year, according to the latest data from New AutoMotive’s Electric Car Count. In January 2022, UK motorists bought 13,000 new electric cars, up from 6,000 in January 2021. The share of the new car market represented by fully electric cars grew from 7% to 13% over the same period. The figures show a month-on-month decline from December’s sales figures, when 26% of new cars were fully electric.
Ben Nelmes, Head of Policy and Research at New AutoMotive, said:
“Electric car sales have doubled in the last year but there is still a mountain to climb to reduce the UK’s carbon emissions from cars. The 90,000 internal combustion engines that rolled off forecourts this month will continue to pollute and hit motorists in their pockets for another 14 years on average.
“During a time of rising fuel and energy costs, the government should be using every tool in the box to enable more people to access the fuel cost savings from buying an electric car. That’s why we’re calling for a California-style ZEV mandate to be introduced as early as possible with ambitious targets.
“While it is disappointing to see a drop in the market share of electric cars from December to January, these figures represent long-term growth in the number of people buying electric cars.”
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. January usually sees a large month-on-month drop when compared with December, and this year is no different. Year-on-year comparisons show continued growth in electric car market share and sales volumes.
Regional highlights
We track regional registrations using a three-month rolling average, which masks big variations in EV market share from month to month. In the context of a falling month-on-month market share for electric cars, 13 DVLA areas still registered trend month-on-month growth in the market share of EVs. The DVLA areas and regions with the highest share of EVs are as follows:
Maidstone (Kent) - 38%
Oxfordshire - 37%
Bristol - 30%
Newcastle - 28%
Peterborough (Cambridgeshire) - 27%
London - 25%
Refer to tables 4 & 5 for full regional statistics.
The race for EV market share
No single marque dominates the market for new EVs, reflecting the growing range of choices available to consumers. January saw no Tesla registrations - their vehicle supply is ‘lumpy’, meaning it tends to stack up in particular months. That depresses the market share of EVs overall.
For the full data, and year-on-year comparisons, refer to table 1 in the full release.
The manufacturers who are quickest to electrify
The brands with the highest proportion of electric sales are notably not volume brands. January saw a number of brands who had been making a strong entry into the EV market fall back on petrol and hybrid sales. It is possible that some brands were bringing forward EV registrations to December that would normally have happened in January in order to meet the UK’s new car CO2 standards - our analysis suggests that VW would be close to missing its targets and needed to sell more low-emission cars. Their brands have noticeably fallen back in the race for market share between December and January.
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.
