New electric car sales grew by 38% year-on-year in May, as the UK’s new car market continues to recover from a disappointing 2022. Electric car sales were responsible for around 18% of all new registrations (up 5 percentage points from May 2022), meaning just under one in five new cars sold in May was fully electric.

⚡ What Our Data Shows

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

“After a slow start to the year, it is good to see electric car sales back in the fast lane. The growth in car sales owes much to a remarkable year-on-year surge in new electric car registrations, which are the fastest growing segment of the market and absolute number of any fuel type.”

“The future of the UK's car market is unequivocally electric, and we expect electric cars to fuel the market's growth in the coming years.”

“The UK government’s plans for a ZEV Mandate will be critical to securing this future growth. Ministers should be racing to get the legislation through Parliament in time for the scheme’s entry into force on 1st January."

The full data release is available here. You can view the data on our interactive dashboard, here.

📈 UK market overview

Petrol’s market share fell slightly this month compared to May 2022, and battery electric and hybrids were the only fuel types to grow both their actual sales volume and overall share of the market. Hybrid’s share of the market grew by under 2 percentage points year-on-year, while electric cars grew by just over 5 percentage points. The growth in electric’s market share was driven by a 38% increase in EV sales compared to May 2022. Burgeoning electric and hybrid registrations drove the expansion of the market overall, despite petrol’s relatively weak showing and diesel’s continued decline.

Table 3 provides a full UK market overview.

📊 ZEV Mandate: State of the Market

Following the publication of the government’s latest plans for a Zero Emissions Vehicle (ZEV) Mandate - a trading scheme to encourage manufacturers to sell more cars. The ZEV Mandate will begin next year with a target for each manufacturer’s sales to be 22% fully electric in the calendar year 2024. At the heart of the ZEV mandate is a trading system, in which manufacturers trade credits (aka allowances), which they must use to meet their targets.

Overall market credit surplus/deficit: -48,667 credits

We estimate that the 32 makes that are eligible for inclusion in the ZEV Mandate would collectively be 48,667 credits short of meeting their regulatory requirements if the 2024 target were in force in the last 12 months. That would mean they would have to either borrow or buy out of their regulatory obligations. Given that the whole market is in deficit, the cost of a credit would be equal to the buy-out price of £15,000 per credit, raising around £730m in buy-out revenues.

🚗 Individual Manufacturer ZEV Mandate Performance

The 32 manufacturers who will be regulated by the ZEV mandate are shown below, with their individual credit balances before and after the proposed CO2 flexibilities are applied. Tesla, MG, Polestar, Cupra, Jaguar, Porsche, Fiat, Renault, and Volvo look set to be net beneficiaries of the ZEV mandate, while Ford, Toyota, and most others still have work to do to meet their 2024 targets.

📌 Regional highlights

Just under one in every two new cars registered in Oxfordshire in May were fully electric - for the second month running - as the area further consolidated itself as the UK’s EV mecca. Again, Wimbledon came in second place, with just under one third (32%) of all new registrations in the area being electric. One in four new registrations in Bristol were full electric, whilst further north around one in five of all new registrations in Manchester and Newcastle were for an electric car.

Oxfordshire - 48%
Wimbledon - 32%
Bristol - 25%
Newcastle - 23%
Manchester - 20%

Refer to tables 4 & 5 for full regional statistics.

🚗 The race for EV market share

Tesla dominated this table for May - as usual in a month where it makes deliveries. The company registered over 3,000 electric cars, and the Tesla Model Y and Model 3 remain two of the most popular electric cars in the UK. Tesla’s dominance is business as normal - more interestingly is the rise of MG. The brand sold just over 2,000 electric cars in May, and has over the first half of 2023 solidified its position as Tesla’s nearest challenger, and the second most dominant player in the UK’s burgeoning EV market. In a sign that more and more high volume manufacturers - including BMW, Audi, Volkswagen and Mercedes-Benz - are taking the electric market more seriously than ever, eight of the ten manufacturers on this table sold over 1,000 electric cars in May.

For the full data, and year-on-year comparisons, refer to table 1 in the full release.

📊 The brands who are quickest to electrify

Niche brand Genesis claimed top spot on this table, with 81% of their sales being electric. Again, MG features at the top end of this table - just under one in two of their sales for May was for an electric vehicle. This is close to double the figure MG recorded in May last year. BMW (fourth place, 25% of all sales electric), Vauxhall (sixth place, 22% of all sales electric), Mercedes-Benz (seventh place, 22% of all sales electric) and Volkswagen (tenth place, 18% of all sales electric) all made the top ten, again confirming that established, high-volume manufacturers are increasingly pivoting toward electric vehicles.

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.

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.

EVs accelerate to 38% year-on-year growth as market rebounds from 2022