One in five new cars bought in November was an EV, with Hyundai ending up as the quickest to electrify its fleet and Tesla retaining the largest share, New AutoMotive’s Electric Car Count (ECC) data has shown.
Petrol’s share of the market fell by five percentage points year-on-year, making up only 44% of all new vehicle sales, the lowest outside of a lockdown period, the transport research organisation said.
“It is encouraging to see the continued recovery in new car sales in the UK, after a difficult period for the market,” the company’s Chief Executive Officer Ben Nelmes said. “Electric vehicles have helped drive this recovery, growing again both in sales volume and market share year-on-year.”
According to New AutoMotive, amid a rising cost of living, EVs have become an attractive option due to their cheap running costs.
“We need to turbo-charge the growth in electric vehicle sales,” Nelmes said. “Ministers should stop delaying, and publish their plans to implement a California-style zero emissions vehicle mandate so that consumers can continue to reap the benefits of the electric car revolution.”
When it came to market share, Tesla dominated the table in November, a standard in a month where they make deliveries. The American EV giant accounted for 21% of all electric cars registered in November, up from 15% in the same month last year. BMW made the top three in this table for the fourth month in a row, coming in at second place, and further cementing its status as one of the incumbent manufacturers best poised to capitalise on the ever-growing popularity of EVs within the UK market. In third place, British marque MG was responsible for 7.5% of all EV registrations, roughly the same as the share of the market it claimed in October.
Meanwhile, more niche manufacturers were quicker to electrify. Genesis, the luxury vehicle division of the South Korean vehicle manufacturer Hyundai, claimed first spot, with nine out of every 10 vehicles it sold in the UK being electric. In second place, roughly one in every two cars registered by Cupra was electric, and, in third place, 43% of new MG cars registered were electric. The classification excludes brands that are 100% electric (such as Tesla and Polestar) from this table since they do not need to electrify their sales.
The firm also provided geographical data based on a three-month rolling average. Oxfordshire was the largest EV hotspot last month, with EVs accounting for 44% of new car sales followed by Anglia (29%), North East England (23%), London (22%), and Birmingham (21%).