Market Share Grows for Electric Vehicles

SMMT data shows the continuing trend in registrations of new electric vehicles with the UK vehicle parc quickly becoming a three-way split.

The most recent data shows an increase in market share of electric vehicles, of all classifications, with petrol and diesel vehicles correspondingly decreasing their share of the new car market.

In just under two years, registrations of new electric vehicles have increased over 15% to represent 21.6% of all new registrations in April 2021, compared to just 6% in June 2019.

The increase seems to have had the biggest adverse effect on diesel vehicles whose market share has fallen 10% (from 27% to 17%) compared with petrol vehicles 5% (from 67% to 62%).

The impact on internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles could have even been larger, with mild or self-charging hybrids, still categorised as ICE vehicles, making up 7% of diesel’s current 17% market share and 18% of petrol’s 62% market share respectively.

Looking further into the electric vehicle market shows an almost even split between battery electric vehicles (BEV), plug-in hybrids (PHEV) and hybrid electric vehicles (HEV) with each holding around 7% of the overall 21% EV market share.

As lockdown restrictions continue to ease across the UK, and with that an expected increase in new vehicle registrations towards pre-pandemic volumes, the data will be ever more critical to establishing market trends which members may wish to consider when considering future fleet and hire choices.