An Excellent Month For Electric Cars Despite An Overall Challenging Trading Environment For The Automotive Sector. Electric Cars At A New High Of 10.5% Market Share!
Electric Cars: The Basics
For those of you new to zero-emission electric driving, we recommend a read of the following articles:
Sign up to the e-zoomed Electric Living newsletter
Before moving onto the latest results i.e. the September 2020 new car registrations update, let us briefly remind ourselves of the August 2020 registrations update.
August 2020 witnessed a continued increase in the registration of battery-electric vehicles (BEVs), despite a continued slowdown in the sales of petrol and diesel internal combustion engine (ICE) cars. Petrol new car registrations were down by 14.7% in August 2020, compared to August 2019. Diesel performed worse, with a 39.5% decline. Diesel market share decreased from 25.5% in August 2019 to 16.4% in August 2020. Petrol market share declined from 62.5% to 56.6% in the same period.
BEV market share increased from 3.4% in August 2019 to 6.4% in August 2020. PHEVs (plug-in hybrid electric vehicles) also witnessed a similar increase from 1% in August 2019 to 3.3% in August 2020.
The September 2020 new car registrations update from The Society of Motor traders and Manufacturers (SMMT), is a continuation of the trend so far witnessed in 2020 i.e. diesel cars further declining in market share between September 2019 to September 2020 from 22.2% to 14.3%.
The same is the trend with petrol cars, witnessing a decline from 65% to 53.8% between September 2019 to September 2020. In terms of registrations, diesel registrations have declined by 38.4% in September 2020 compared to September 2019, with petrol registrations decreasing 20.9% in September 2020.
September is the second most important month for new car registrations. Overall the market was down 4.4% with 328,041 new car registrations. With the potential of a second lock-down and the ongoing pandemic, the automotive sector will continue to face significant challenges in the near and medium term.
BEV market share increased from 2.2% in September 2019 to 6.7% in September 2020. PHEVs also witnessed a similar increase from 1.5% in September 2019 to 3.8% in September 2020. 66,611 BEVs have been registered to date this year, an increase of 165.4% from last year.
Year-to-date the overall sector continues to face a challenging trading environment, with new car registrations down 33.2%. Despite the continued increase of sales of electric vehicles, though new EV car sales are still below the 10% market share threshold (8.8%) year-to-date, we at e-zoomed expect it to cross it shortly.
The lack of BEVs and PHEVs on the SMMT September 2020 Best Sellers list, is a firm reminder that the despite all the progress, the adoption of electric vehicles is still requires much work!