Sales of electric cars in the UK continue to outperform the market as a whole, according to January’s registrations figures published by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT). Plug-in cars saw registrations increase more than 8% compared to last year, compared to an total market figure of -1.6%.
Pure electric models performed particularly well, up more than 110% over January 2018. A total of 1,334 pure-EVs were registered in January 2019, which though encouraging, is still down on PHEV sales of 2,268.
January 2019 saw the highest split of EV sales compared to PHEVs since March 2017, perhaps signs of the change to Plug-in Car Grant levels in October last year- which effectively removed PHEV support, focusing instead on pure-EVs – starting to filter through to registrations.
As we are only one month into 2019, we are clearly up on last year too, and yet to see whether the 3,602 EVs registered so far can continue to exceed 2018’s figures. However, the rolling 12-month total registrations figure sees the figure to the end of January 2019 up more than 25% compared to February 2017-January 2018.
Table courtesy of SMMT
Though January’s EV market share of 2.2% is well below the 3%+ figures we are now used to seeing, it is still an improvement over 2018’s share of 2.0%. Looking further back, January is traditionally a quiet month in terms of EV market share.
Looking at Alternatively Fuelled Vehicles (AFVs) – which include the likes of EVs, PHEVs, and hybrids – the market grew more than 26% in January 2019, and took a market share of almost 7%. To compare, the petrol market grew more than 7% with a market share of 64%, while diesel’s decline continues – down 20% and a market share of 29%.
Table courtesy of SMMT
