The torrent of bad headlines about the UK’s electric car ambitions has not deterred consumers, according to New AutoMotive’s latest Electric Car Count data. Electric car registrations grew 6% in January, recording the fastest growth of any fuel type. Despite the collapse of Britishvolt, January also saw a series of announcements of new investment in UK electric vehicle manufacturing as Nanotech Energy announced its intention to invest £1bn in new battery manufacturing in the UK, and WAE Technologies unveiled plans for a new battery manufacturing plant in Oxfordshire. There was also news that two companies have placed bids for Britishvolt.

⚡ What Our Data Shows

Ben Nelmes, Chief Executive Officer at New AutoMotive, said:

“Following a month of negative headlines for the UK’s transition to electric cars, we were pleasantly surprised to see sales of electric cars continue to grow. The data show that UK motorists are perfectly happy to embrace cleaner, cheaper, better transport.”

“This month’s collapse of Britishvolt is regrettable, but there is a bright future for British battery manufacturing. Ministers have a role to play, and must make sure the UK is as attractive as possible to site battery manufacturing. The UK needs a green industrial strategy if we are to attract the jobs, investment and growth that the global transition to electric vehicles offers.”

“A good first step would be to end the delay to the long-overdue ZEV Mandate. This scheme is vital to attracting investment and creating clean, green and future-proofed British jobs.”

The full data release will be available here. You can view the data on our interactive dashboard, here when it is published. To find out more about how we calculate the per mile running costs for various fuel types, contact us at data@newautomotive.org.

📈 UK market overview

Despite weak car sales overall , electric cars continued to grow in popularity. New EV registrations increased by 6% compared to January 2022, and electric’s share of the market grew slightly, from 12.55% to 13.51% year-on-year. Petrol sales continued to decrease year-on-year. Whilst petrol’s market share recovered from its historically low market share in December 2022 (when just 37% of all new car sales were for a petrol vehicle), petrol sales still fell by almost 5% year-on-year. Diesel sales continued to plummet, as the fuel type becomes increasingly irrelevant within the UK car market; sales fell by 15%, almost 2000 vehicles, and diesels accounted for only 6.64% of all sales this month.

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

📌 Regional highlights

We track regional registrations using a three-month rolling average, which masks big variations in EV market share from month to month. The DVLA regions with the highest share of EVs are as follows:

Peterborough - 56%
Oxford - 50%
Wimbledon - 22%
Bristol -34%
Newcastle - 30%

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

Unusually for a month in which it made deliveries, Tesla did not dominate this table - the company sold just 530 cars in January, claiming under 4% of the market. It may be that the company’s deliveries this month were simply the late fulfilment of orders that were meant to be fulfilled last December. At the top of the table, Volkswagen, Audi, and BMW achieved 10.09%, 10%, and 9.5% market share respectively, meaning they collectively account for three in every ten new electric car sales over January. MG and Kia, in 4th and 5th place respectively, trailed just outside this leading pack, with both sitting at just under 7.5% market share. The competitiveness of the top end of this table should encourage manufacturers; the race to dominate the electric segment of the market is still wide open, and marques who can electrify at pace will be rewarded.

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

Genesis topped this table, verging on 100% electric; 91% of the marque’s sales were electric in January, a remarkable achievement. Whilst Genesis’s progress is exciting, it should be noted that the company sells a relatively low volume of cars overall (under 100 this month), and therefore its electrification is not as impactful as that of other, larger brands.

Several manufacturers who do sell at high volumes in the UK made good progress in this table this month. 22% of BMW’s sales and 20% of Audi sales were electric in January, with both companies selling well over 1,000 electric cars. Further down the list, MG (ranked 11th, with 17% of all their January sales being electric) and Kia (ranked 14th, with 16% of all their January sales being electric) both also sold over 1,000 EVs. The continued electrification of well-established, high sales volume marques such as these is essential to the success of the UK’s transition going forward.

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 market share grows by 6% - the fastest of any fuel type