2020 was a year of profound change for the UK car market. The coronavirus pandemic severely disrupted car manufacturing and sales - alongside the government’s announcement to ban the sales of new petrol and diesel vehicles. What lessons can we draw from such an extraordinary year?

In early December, ahead of SMMT formal statistics, we predicted that 10,500 new fully battery electric cars (BEVs) were sold in the UK in November: the actual number was 10,345, for a remarkable 9.1% market share of all new cars sold. In this piece, we dissect these figures to understand what this means for consumers, policy-makers, and the automotive industry.

2020 has seen sales of all new cars drop by 30% overall in the UK, whilst battery electric vehicle (BEV) sales have increased by over 150%. This means 1 in every 16 cars purchased in 2020 was a BEV. What does this mean for the automotive industry, policy-makers, and consumers?

The UK government has chosen to announce the phase out of sales of petrol and diesel cars at just the right time. We are at a Goldilocks moment: just when EVs are becoming affordable, but before they become so cheap that we remain stuck in the past with the sharply declining technology of combustion engines. What does this mean for drivers?

The fall in demand for diesel has been driven by tightening emissions standards, the introduction of clean air zones (most notably the ultra-low emissions zone in London), changing public attitudes towards air pollution, as well as the increasing affordability and range of EV models. Does this mean diesel over and done, however? Don’t be so sure.

Cars clock up 255 billion miles every year on UK roads. At present, there is no measure of how many of those miles are travelled in electric vehicles. But the data is available. We have access to that data, and are building a live tool – the New AutoMotive Index – that will measure the UK’s vehicle mileage, break it down by carbon intensity, and allow anyone who needs to know to view it on our website.