Electric vans are chipping away at diesel’s dominance
August was a strong month for electric van sales, with electric accounting for 7% of the market. With new van registrations down a staggering 28% compared to August 2021, it is encouraging that electric vans continue to grow in both market share and total sales volume - the only fuel type to do so. Electric vans are chipping away at diesel’s dominance, but more must be done to speed this transition up.
⚡ What Our Data Shows
Ciara Cook, Research and Policy Officer at New AutoMotive, said:
“Amid a slump in the total number of new van registrations, electric vans were the only segment of the market to buck the trend and show significant growth. It is encouraging that an increasing number of businesses and individuals are making the switch, drawn by the savings in running costs electric vans offer over diesel models.”
“It is absolutely imperative that the new government continues to support the growing market for electric vans going forward. Policies such as the Plug-in Van and Truck Grant (PiVTG) must remain in place in order to allow more drivers to make the switch to an electric van.“
“The new transport secretary, Anne-Marie Trevelyan, should look at strengthening the ZEV Mandate targets for vans in order to drive the industry forward. The 8% target proposed by the government for 2024 is beginning to look unambitious, as the electric van market continues to go from strength to strength. Increasing this target early sends a clear message to the industry and gives them enough time to prepare their supply chains.”
The full data release is available here. You can view the data on our interactive dashboard, here.
📈 UK market overview
Diesel vans remain the largest market segment by far. However, the Diesel market share dropped 4% compared to August 2021, and this is largely thanks to the growth in the electric market share.
🚗 The race for EV market share
Peugeot had a very strong month, accounting for 35% of all electric vans registered in August and selling 309 more electric vans than the same month last year. Notably there are a number of brands that have registered significantly less than August 2021. Mercedes, Toyota and Renault all saw a dip. This may be for a number of reasons, including supply chain problems.
For the full data, and year-on-year comparisons, refer to table 1 in the full release.
📊 The brands who are quickest to electrify
For the third time in a row Maxus have topped this table with 58% of their registrations being electric. Of the high volume manufacturers, Peugeot, in second place, represents the best performance with 39% of their registrations being electric. For the three largest volume manufacturers (Ford, Volkswagen and Mercedes), electric vans make up a smaller proportion of their registrations, with Volkswagen not registering a single electric van in August.
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 Van Count
Electric Van 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 Van Count provides an overview of the newly licensed vans. It is released monthly, on the second Monday of each month, providing data on the previous month’s newly licensed vans. 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 Electric vans in the UK.
Visit our interactive data dashboard here: https://newautomotive.org/evc
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 shows the number of type N1 vehicles (vehicles for the carriage of goods with a maximum mass not exceeding 3.5 tonnes) 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 vans 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.