EVs continue to grow in popularity despite market slump
Amid a slump in new car registrations in May, electric cars continued to grow in popularity - they were the only fuel type to grow the number of new cars registered and the share of the market.
⚡ What Our Data Shows
Ben Nelmes, Head of Policy and Research at New AutoMotive, said:
“Amid global supply chain disruption and a cost of living crisis driving people away from petrol and diesel, it’s encouraging that electric cars continue to grow in popularity.”
“Electric cars are a great way to beat the rising cost of petrol and diesel; driving a mile in an electric car is around a fifth of the cost of driving a mile in a petrol or diesel car.“
“While the steady growth of electric cars is welcome, the UK can and should be going faster. Ministers need to make the UK the best place for manufacturers to sell their electric vehicles, and a strong California-style ZEV mandate which will drive up car sales is the first step.“
The full data release is available here. You can view the data on our interactive dashboard, here.
📈 UK market overview
The new car market was down overall in May, from 147,115 new cars in May 2021 to 108,369 cars in May 2021. Electric cars were the only fuel type that saw growth in both the absolute numbers and market share.
📌 Regional highlights
The Maidstone DVLA area (which includes Kent) had the highest share of EV registrations, followed by Oxfordshire. The Peterborough DLVA area (which includes parts of Cambridgeshire) came in second with over 1 in every three new cars registered in both of these areas electric. Oxfordshire continues to fall down the list of EV hotspots now in third place.
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:
Maidstone (covering all of Kent) - 33%
Oxfordshire - 32%
Peterborough (inc. Cambridgeshire) - 31%
Bristol - 20%
Refer to tables 4 & 5 for full regional statistics.
🚗 The race for EV market share
Tesla made no deliveries this month, meaning they do not appear in this table. BMW had the largest share of the market, with 10% of all new electric cars sold in May in the UK bearing the BMW marque. Kia, VW and Hyundai also made a strong showing.
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 often feature at the top of this table, and are back at the number 1 spot in May with over half of all their new car sales being fully electric. Fiat also have shot up this league table. In May 2021, Fiat registered just 61 electric cars accounting for 3% of their sales; this has now risen to 515 electric cars and 36% of their sales. The increase comes ahead of Fiat’s commitment that from July 1st 2022 it will sell fully electric and hybrid cars in the UK, opting out of combustion-only cars. Citroen have also made good progress, having sold just 62 electric cars in May 2021 and 508 in May 2022.
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.
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.
