Electric van market doubles year on year
After a boost in new van registrations in September, October was a return to gloomier times for the automotive industry. Despite this, the new electric van registrations remained strong - as they have for much of 2022. Electric vans market share doubled compared to October last year, whilst total sales volume also increased.
⚡ What Our Data Shows
Ciara Cook, Research and Policy Officer at New AutoMotive, said:
“October marks the third time this year that electric van sales have met or exceeded the proposed ZEV Mandate electric van targets of 8% in 2024. This is a clear sign to the government that these proposed targets are far below what is achievable for the electric van market, and actually risk slowing down the very growth the scheme seeks to incentivise. These targets must be raised”
“The electric van market cannot be allowed to become a victim of its own success. Sales figures have doubled since October last year, and the government must use the ZEV mandate to ensure adequate supply and protect the electric van market from the supply issues that have plagued the passenger vehicle market. With electric van sales still behind that for passenger vehicles, lessons learnt from the car market must inform the government's approach to encouraging the take-up of electric vans.”
“The new transport secretary, the Right Honourable Mark Harper MP, can score an early win by more ambitious targets for the take-up of electric vans. This will help to ensure the UK cuts transport emissions and meets its net zero targets, as well as helping to support businesses in accessing the running cost savings electric vans offer.”
The full data release is available here. You can view the data on our interactive dashboard, here.
📈 UK market overview
Electric vans claimed a market share of 9% for October, the second highest monthly market share they have ever achieved, demonstrating the strength of the electric van market. As we have come to expect over an otherwise grim year for new van registrations overall, the electric segment was the only market segment to show growth. However, despite this progress, 17,149 diesel vans were registered in October. Each of these polluting vehicles will remain on British roads for the next decade.
🚗 The race for EV market share
Topping the table this month is Peugeot, which claimed 47% of the overall electric van market. Again, the top 3 manufacturers claimed a massive share of all electric registrations - 72% of all new van sales. The other marques need to improve their positions, and quickly, or risk being pushed out of the market. Vauxhall has fallen from representing 44% of electric van registrations last month to just 7% this month, demonstrating the high degree of variability between the top brands month to month.
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 fifth time in a row Maxus takes top place in this table, with 50% of its registrations being electric. With Maxus coming second for largest share of the overall electric van market as well, the marque is positioning itself as an emerging market leader. All manufacturers, apart from Renault Trucks in last place, have improved their EVs as a percent of total registrations.
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.