Changing Vehicle Market Share - The Data
Discussion
There's often a ton of speculation about how the new car market is changing with the introduction of EVs, BEVs, PHEVs etc. There are claims that the market for EVs is doubling every year and that anyone who buys a car with an engine is at best out of step, at worst buying obsolete technology. There are others that claim that the EV hype is over stated, that ICE is still the future etc etc etc. So I decided to look at this objectively using two data sources... The SMMT who publish detailed breakdowns on a monthly basis and The DVLA who publish data more infrequently. Broadly the two do align to within the rounding that the DVLA do on numbers, but it's the SMMT data that drives the more recent detail...
I've graphed 3 elements of data because it's so much easier to consume this information visually, and using proportions rather than absolute numbers. Much of the press is very keen to use absolute numbers because it's really easy to claim stats like "Diesel has halved in popularity with less than 13,500 Diesel cars sold in May 2022, almost half of the over 26,000 sold the previous year" without drawing attention to the fact that in May '21 the total market was 159k cars and in May 2022 it was 124k. Still a fall but not quite the headline claimed by some journalists.
So here is some data in graphical format - there is nothing attributable about the colours I picked, I just didn't want red and green next to each other and I wanted EV to stand out. I've also combined "MHEV" and non-hybrid ICE because there is nothing massively novel about a battery that is there to allow the car to coast and nothing more. It can't drive the vehicle forwards and accelerate it so it's not a hybrid.
As you'd expect there's a bit of a jagged peak and trough to the data at this level. Clearly the data is showing increases in BEV market share as you'd expect in the political climate we are in. Perhaps the most striking thing to note is that actually market share for Petrol power is broadly static at 57.5% on average. The low is 50.4% in December 2021 and the peak 62.2% in Feb 2021. By contrast the best period for BEV was December 2021 at 25.5% and the worst 6.5% in April 2021. In 2022 the respective averages are 57.1% and 14.9%. Stunning growth from nothing for sure but not quite the primary option yet.
Here you can see a bit more of a trend in the data. You can see the impressively fast growth in EV market share. The interesting thing is the overall slope shape is indicative of the same trend seen for Diesel two decades earlier. Clearly this is going to significantly driven by the same incentives used two decades ago - namely the compelling case for company car drivers to pick EV. For me it's amazing to see the squeeze on other fuels has almost totally come at the expense of Diesel, yes there is some narrowing on Petrol, but it's Diesel that has born the brunt of the market squeeze. You can also see the 2 year lag between Dieselgate in 2015 and the market change in 2017-2019 with the growth in Petrol market share as EV hadn't yet hit prime time. Up to 2018 the EV market was sub 1% of sales, but in 2019 it grew to 1.6%, then 6.6% in 2020, 11.6% in 2021 and 15.1% this year to date. Every indication is there that this year we'll settle in the 15-16% region for the whole year but this has to be tempered with the fact that 2022 looks like less than 1.6m new cars will be sold, the lowest sales of any year in this dataset.
Looking at the fleet over the last nearly 30 years shows the effect the rapid rise of EV has had with nearly 400k pure EVs on the roads at the end of 2021 and 2022 looking to add another circa 250k to that it means that by the end of this year about 650k pure EVs will be on the roads of the UK, out of a fleet of just under 32m cars - around 2% of cars. Again a positive and impressive rise in EV percentage in just 3-4 years, however even if we were to continue this trend, people claim petrol stations will be almost impossible to find by 2035 are probably overstating the case somewhat. Even with government targets, we're looking at about 10% EV in the fleet by 2030, maybe as much as 12.5%. 1 in 8 isn't to be sniffed at, that's like the prevalence of Diesel around the year 2000... they were not rare but they were not every other car either.
So there it is, some data, presented graphically and I hope without bias or hyperbole.
I've graphed 3 elements of data because it's so much easier to consume this information visually, and using proportions rather than absolute numbers. Much of the press is very keen to use absolute numbers because it's really easy to claim stats like "Diesel has halved in popularity with less than 13,500 Diesel cars sold in May 2022, almost half of the over 26,000 sold the previous year" without drawing attention to the fact that in May '21 the total market was 159k cars and in May 2022 it was 124k. Still a fall but not quite the headline claimed by some journalists.
So here is some data in graphical format - there is nothing attributable about the colours I picked, I just didn't want red and green next to each other and I wanted EV to stand out. I've also combined "MHEV" and non-hybrid ICE because there is nothing massively novel about a battery that is there to allow the car to coast and nothing more. It can't drive the vehicle forwards and accelerate it so it's not a hybrid.
Monthly Data - December 2020 to November 2022
As you'd expect there's a bit of a jagged peak and trough to the data at this level. Clearly the data is showing increases in BEV market share as you'd expect in the political climate we are in. Perhaps the most striking thing to note is that actually market share for Petrol power is broadly static at 57.5% on average. The low is 50.4% in December 2021 and the peak 62.2% in Feb 2021. By contrast the best period for BEV was December 2021 at 25.5% and the worst 6.5% in April 2021. In 2022 the respective averages are 57.1% and 14.9%. Stunning growth from nothing for sure but not quite the primary option yet.
Annual Data - 2001 to 2022
Here you can see a bit more of a trend in the data. You can see the impressively fast growth in EV market share. The interesting thing is the overall slope shape is indicative of the same trend seen for Diesel two decades earlier. Clearly this is going to significantly driven by the same incentives used two decades ago - namely the compelling case for company car drivers to pick EV. For me it's amazing to see the squeeze on other fuels has almost totally come at the expense of Diesel, yes there is some narrowing on Petrol, but it's Diesel that has born the brunt of the market squeeze. You can also see the 2 year lag between Dieselgate in 2015 and the market change in 2017-2019 with the growth in Petrol market share as EV hadn't yet hit prime time. Up to 2018 the EV market was sub 1% of sales, but in 2019 it grew to 1.6%, then 6.6% in 2020, 11.6% in 2021 and 15.1% this year to date. Every indication is there that this year we'll settle in the 15-16% region for the whole year but this has to be tempered with the fact that 2022 looks like less than 1.6m new cars will be sold, the lowest sales of any year in this dataset.
UK Fleet - 1994 to 2021
Looking at the fleet over the last nearly 30 years shows the effect the rapid rise of EV has had with nearly 400k pure EVs on the roads at the end of 2021 and 2022 looking to add another circa 250k to that it means that by the end of this year about 650k pure EVs will be on the roads of the UK, out of a fleet of just under 32m cars - around 2% of cars. Again a positive and impressive rise in EV percentage in just 3-4 years, however even if we were to continue this trend, people claim petrol stations will be almost impossible to find by 2035 are probably overstating the case somewhat. Even with government targets, we're looking at about 10% EV in the fleet by 2030, maybe as much as 12.5%. 1 in 8 isn't to be sniffed at, that's like the prevalence of Diesel around the year 2000... they were not rare but they were not every other car either.
So there it is, some data, presented graphically and I hope without bias or hyperbole.
Yes, the collapse in diesel sales has been really quite impressive.
However, I don't think we can make the assumption that just because in numbers terms, diesel sales have been replated by EVs, that diesel buyers are moving to EVs, Thinking about the demographics, I suspect to a great extent diesel buyers are moving to petrol cars, and petrol buyers are moving to BEVs. I think both of those trends will probably continue, but eventually there wont be enough diesel buyers switching to petrol to compensate for the petrol buyers switching to BEVs, so petrol sales will start to fall as well (if that makes sense).
Also, personally, I think the graph would be more useful if the hybrids were lumped in with whichever liquid fuel powers them. That would probably show sales of "vehicles getting all or most of their energy from petrol" actually rising in market share over the last few years.
Over the next few of years as automotive microchip production starts to properly come back online, it will be interesting to see whether BEV market share continues to grow rapidly or starts to level off.
However, I don't think we can make the assumption that just because in numbers terms, diesel sales have been replated by EVs, that diesel buyers are moving to EVs, Thinking about the demographics, I suspect to a great extent diesel buyers are moving to petrol cars, and petrol buyers are moving to BEVs. I think both of those trends will probably continue, but eventually there wont be enough diesel buyers switching to petrol to compensate for the petrol buyers switching to BEVs, so petrol sales will start to fall as well (if that makes sense).
Also, personally, I think the graph would be more useful if the hybrids were lumped in with whichever liquid fuel powers them. That would probably show sales of "vehicles getting all or most of their energy from petrol" actually rising in market share over the last few years.
Over the next few of years as automotive microchip production starts to properly come back online, it will be interesting to see whether BEV market share continues to grow rapidly or starts to level off.
Edited by kambites on Monday 5th December 22:43
Chris Hinds said:
Clearly the data is showing increases in BEV market share as you'd expect in the political climate we are in.
So there it is, some data, presented graphically and I hope without bias or hyperbole.
Thanks - nice presentation of the data. Mr Picky would like to point out that you did in fact have some bias/ editorialising in there by attributing an explanation for increases in BEV market share to the political climate, rather than, say, product or economicsSo there it is, some data, presented graphically and I hope without bias or hyperbole.
Fastdruid said:
I would suspect that the diesel share is being sacrificed by the company car "owners" buying EV's to get reduced BIK (as they previously went Diesel rather than Petrol for the same reasons).
Fair observation. Almost all the EV owners I know own (or lease) them personally, and almost all of them came from petrol (or petrol/electric hybrid) vehicles, but you may be right that that's the exception not the norm. I can't actually see any statistics for what proportion of new BEV registrations are BIK leases.
Edited by kambites on Tuesday 6th December 13:50
kambites said:
Fastdruid said:
I would suspect that the diesel share is being sacrificed by the company car "owners" buying EV's to get reduced BIK (as they previously went Diesel rather than Petrol for the same reasons).
Fair observation. Almost all the EV owners I know own (or lease) them personally, and almost all of them came from petrol (or petrol/electric hybrid) vehicles, but you may be right that that's the exception not the norm. I can't actually see any statistics for what proportion of new BEV registrations are BIK leases.
Finally some good data. At my offices everyone is migrating from diesel to petrol. From petrol its a short step to a hybrid.
A lot of demonization of diesel is happening at schools around us where NOX is blamed for anything from adhd to asthma and where diesel SUV's are the equivalent of walking sh@t onto someones carpet now. Mums are under peer pressure to go electric.
Electric cars could be the new handbag.
A lot of demonization of diesel is happening at schools around us where NOX is blamed for anything from adhd to asthma and where diesel SUV's are the equivalent of walking sh@t onto someones carpet now. Mums are under peer pressure to go electric.
Electric cars could be the new handbag.
Some really good points in response and yes quite correct I hadn't contemplated that there would also be a not insignificant proportion of Diesel to Petrol transition too. I'm also sorry for the comment on politics, because I didn't mean that to be in any way against EVs as I do think that manufacturers would have continued to make only ICE vehicles without the political aim to eliminate ICE... we'd have Elon with Tesla in a niche and perhaps a few show concept cars. Some good insights nonetheless and agree peer pressure is undoubtedly one major aim of the phase of the market we're currently at.
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