UK (finally) registers millionth electric vehicle
It's taken 22 years to reach a million - but the SMMT reckons halving VAT could double it again in two years
January 2024 saw the millionth electric car registered on the UK’s roads. The very first was in 2002 (shout now if you know what it is), and with 20,935 BEVs registered in the United Kingdom last month, the overall number of zero emissions registrations stands at 1,001,677.
In the 18th consecutive month of new car sales growth for the UK (and the best January since 2020), 142,876 new cars were registered last month; just over 20,000 EVs gives them a 14.7 per cent market share, less than half that of plug-in hybrids (31.1 per cent) though ahead of non-plug-in hybrids at 13.1 per cent. The increase in new car registration across the board has been driven entirely by the fleet sector, which rose by 29.9 per cent against the same period in 2023, while the private side saw a 15.8 per cent decline.
The news is even worse for electric; on the business side, things are going great guns, with 16,922 registrations in January 2024 against 11,939 only 12 months before. But the private market dropped by more than a quarter (25.1 per cent), from 5,358 to 4,013. That despite the wealth of new models launched in the past year. And obviously a concern to car makers given the Zero Emissions Mandate in place for this year, where 22 per cent of new car sales in the UK must be electric.
For the numbers to pick up, the SMMT believes that private buyers must be incentivised (again) to make the switch to electric. It has suggested a temporary halving of VAT on EVs be included in next month’s budget; it reckons that such a move would cost the Treasury only around £1,125 per car and would ‘put more than a quarter of a million electric - rather than petrol or diesel cars on the road by the end of 2026’. That’s in addition to those that were already expected to be sold. By the SMMT’s calculations, that could mean another million EVs registered in just another two years - with more than five million tonnes of CO2 saved in that time as well. More new EVs sold would mean wider availability of used ones, too, helping more car buyers make the switch; theoretically, having a greater number of EVs on the road should encourage extra chargers to be installed as well. Which, needless to say, is part of the problem.
SMMT Chief Exec Mike Hawes added: “Market growth is currently dependent on businesses and fleets. Government must therefore use the upcoming Budget to support private EV buyers, temporarily halving VAT to cut carbon, drive economic growth and help everyone make the switch. Manufacturers have been asked to supply the vehicles, we now ask government to help consumers buy the vehicles on which net zero depends.”
As a result, the EV outlook for 2024 isn’t quite as rosy as it once was. There’s still expected to be 100,000 more EVs sold this year than in 2023 (somewhere around 414,000), though the market share - of an overall 1.974m estimate - is predicted to be around 21 per cent. A year ago this stood at 23.3 per cent, and even as recently as October was 22.3 per cent. Let’s see what the Chancellor has in his big red box for prospective EV owners come March 6th.
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