15% of new cars are electric - second month in a row
October was yet another strong month for electric car registrations in the UK, according to new figures from Electric Car Count, which tracks new car registrations in the UK. October saw electric cars take over 15% of the market for a second month in a row, with a big number of brands now recording large numbers of EV registrations.
Ben Nelmes, Head of Policy and Research at New AutoMotive, said:
“October’s new car registration figures showed the diversity of the market for battery electric cars in the UK - with no brand securing more than 10% of the market for new EV sales.
“Parts of the country are racing ahead in the switch to electric cars. Nearly 1 in 4 new cars bought in Newcastle in October was fully electric. In some parts of the country, as many as 1 in three new cars are fully electric.
“As world leaders gather in Glasgow, these figures are a reminder of the great progress the UK is making towards clean transport. We hope that other countries follow the UK’s lead by setting ambitious dates by which they will end the sale of new polluting cars.”
The full data release is available here. You can view the data on our interactive dashboard, here.
Please note that due to a technical fault, October’s release undercounts the number of newly registered cars by an estimated 1,000 - 4,000. We will update the data in the spreadsheet and on our site in the coming days with the full data.
UK market overview
October’s figures confirmed that electric cars have firmly overtaken diesel registrations. Sales of new diesel cars have never recovered following the coronavirus pandemic. New petrol registrations continue to decline, while electric cars continue to show the fastest and strongest growth.
Table 3 provides a full UK market overview.
Regional highlights
Newcastle remained the city with the highest share of EV registrations, with 1 in 4 new cars being fully electric. Bristol and London are a close second. In some parts of the country - south west London and Oxfordshire - EVs make up 1 in three new cars sold.
We present regional data on a three-month rolling average to account for irregular vehicle supply patterns.
The race for EV market share
Our breakdown by marque tells a story of a continued fight for EV market share, with manufacturers racing to secure a significant portion of what they know will be the whole car market in the future. Kia topped the table this month, with Tesla making barely any deliveries and hence not featuring in the top ten list.
For the full data, and year-on-year comparisons, refer to table 1 in the full release.
The manufacturers who are quickest to electrify
MG stole the top spot in October, with a massive 59% of their new cars being fully electric. That is an extraordinary position to be in so early in the transition to electric cars. Jaguar continued to feature high up the list, with over half of all new Jaguars now fully electric.
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.
