The new car market continued its recent resurgence in November, growing by 10% compared to the same month in 2021. Just under 21% of all new registrations were electric, an increase year-on-year, meaning one in five new registrations in November were for an electric car. Petrol’s share of the market fell by 5 percentage points year-on-year, making up only 44% of all new vehicle sales. This figure is the lowest petrol market share outside of a lockdown period. New diesel registrations remained low, making hybrids the biggest winners from the drop in petrols market share; they claimed a 27% market share, compared to just under 24% in November 2021.

⚡ What Our Data Shows

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

“It is encouraging to see the continued recovery in new car sales in the UK, after a difficult period for the market.”

“Electric vehicles have helped drive this recovery, growing again both in sales volume and market share year-on-year, while petrol sales are stuck in the slow line, with their lowest market share outside of a lockdown month.”

“As finance and leasing costs have risen over the last 12 months, the cost of leasing some electric models has fallen. Combined with the cheap running costs, this makes electric cars an attractive way to beat the rising cost of living.”

“We need to turbo-charge the growth in electric vehicle sales. Ministers should stop delaying, and publish their plans to implement a California-style zero emissions vehicle mandate so that consumers can continue to reap the benefits of the electric car revolution.”

The full data release will be available here. You can view the data on our interactive dashboard, here when it is published.

📈 UK market overview

New car registrations rose by 10% - over 11,000 additional registrations - compared to November 2021, and manufacturers will hope this upwards trend continues throughout December and into the new year. Each fuel type saw a growth in actual sales volume year-on-year in November - with one glaring exception.

Even as the market overall grew, the number of new petrol registrations stagnated. This saw petrol’s market share fall 5 percentage points year-on-year, from 49.78% in November last year to 44.78% last month. This is the lowest market share petrol has outside of a lockdown month. With the increase in popularity of electric and hybrid cars, it looks increasingly unlikely petrol will ever again claim a market share of over 50%. Incumbent manufacturers would be wise to recognise this, and focus their commercial activity accordingly.

Diesel sales, a minor segment of the new car market, remained consistent - despite a slight increase in actual sales volume, diesel’s market share fell half a percentage point year-on-year to 7%. Electric and hybrid registrations claimed the share of the market petrol lost.

Electric cars accounted for 21% of all sales, up 2 percentage points from 19% of all new sales in November 2021. Whilst this growth in market share may seem relatively minor, it saw over 4,000 more new EV registrations last month compared to the same month in 2021 - a significant increase in actual sales volume - and means one in five new cars registered in November were electric. For new EV sales, November was a healthy and solid, if unremarkable, continuation of the steady growth that has characterised the second half of this year.

Worryingly for the UK’s transition and net zero goals, hybrid take-up grew again in October. Just under 7,000 more new hybrids were registered last month compared to the same month last year, seeing hybrid sales account for 27% of all sales in November. Whilst less polluting than petrol or diesels, traditional hybrids and plug-in hybrids are more expensive to run and maintain than electric cars, depriving motorists of the economic benefits of a zero emission vehicle whilst also still polluting UK roads.

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:

Oxfordshire - 44%
Anglia - 29%
North East England - 23%
London -22%
Birmingham - 21%

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

Tesla dominated this table in November - which is still standard in a month where they make deliveries. The American manufacturer was responsible for 21% of all electric cars registered, up from 15% in the same month last year. BMW made the top three in this table for the fourth month in a row, coming in at second place, and further cementing its status as one of the incumbent manufacturers best poised to capitalise on the ever growing popularity of EVs within the UK market. In third place, British marque MG was responsible for 7.48% of all EV registrations - a consistent showing, roughly the same as the share of the market it claimed in October.

Perhaps one of the most interesting indicators of what this table may look like in a year's time was the registration of a handful of GWM Ora Funky Cats. Manufactured by the Chinese manufacturer Great Wall Motors (GWM), the Ora Funky Cat is a 4m long fully electric city car, and the models registered last month are likely heading to showrooms across the country prior to the model going on sale in the UK early next year.

Bigger than a MINI electric, with a range of 193 miles, and priced at a reasonably affordable £31,995 (with cheaper models apparently on the way), the Ora Funky Cat is likely to be the first of a wave of models from Chinese, electric only manufacturers poised to go on the market in 2023. Incumbent manufacturers would do well to sit up and take notice - the innocently named Funky Cat could mark a new challenge to their dominance of the UK 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

Once again, smaller, more niche manufacturers dominated this table. Genesis, the luxury vehicle division of the South Korean vehicle manufacturer Hyundai, claimed first spot, with an impressive 92% of all vehicles it sold in the UK being electric in November. Genesis are positioning themselves as specialists in luxury electric cars - a niche which will only grow in the future. In second place, roughly one in every two cars registered by Cupra was electric, and, in third place, 43% of new MG cars registered were electric.

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.

⚡ The ZEV Mandate explained

What is the ZEV mandate?

The government has promised to introduce a scheme known as a ‘Zero Emissions Vehicle Mandate’, known more commonly as a ZEV mandate. The ZEV mandate is a system of legally binding targets that requires car and van manufacturers to sell an increasing number of zero emissions cars and vans as a proportion of all the cars and vans they sell. This is a kind of policy that has been used for cars in California and China, and is very similar to the system the UK has used to successfully incentivise renewable electricity, known as the ‘Renewables Obligation’.

How do the targets work?

The targets are set as a percentage figure, and will start at 22% in 2024. That means that in 2024, 22% of all cars sold by any manufacturer must be zero emissions. The targets will gradually increase over time. If a manufacturer cannot meet their target, they must either pay a penalty or buy some ‘surplus’ from a manufacturer who has exceeded their targets.

Is this the same thing as the 2030 and 2035 phase-out of sales of petrol, diesel and hybrid cars and vans?

Not quite. The ZEV mandate is the policy that will encourage car manufacturers to shift to selling only zero emissions vehicles in line with the 2030 and 2035 deadlines. This is the policy that will make that ambition a reality. There are also other things the government is doing to realise that ambition, for example investing in charge points and using tax breaks for cars and grants for vans.

When will the ZEV mandate come into force?

It will come into force from 2024. The scheme is currently being designed by the Department for Transport, who recently consulted on how it might work. You can read about their plans here.

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.

Around 21% of new registrations were electric - is the market about to get a shakeup?