UK Electric Car Sales Show The Beginning Of Post-COVID Recovery

A rough year of lockdowns as May 2020 closed businesses and lost a lot of money due to the Coronavirus. Finally, things are finally starting to look up, especially for electric car sales. The government’s four-step roadmap finally allows a route back to a more normal life, meaning all types of sales can begin to rebuild. But, how has this benefitted the electric and hybrid vehicle market?

When comparing May 2020 to 2021, there is a rise of 441% in pure-electric car sales across the UK. This happened at a time when dealerships were forced to close their doors to the public during the first lockdown; producing some pretty impressive figures given circumstances. Although, general car sales aren’t completely out of danger yet with figures showing an overall sale decrease of 29% on the 10-year May average.

An enormous 156,737 new cars were registered in May 2021; 13,120 of those were pure electric, 9,855 were plug-in hybrids, and 13,000 were full hybrids.
Pure petrol vehicles accounted for 48.4% of last month’s total, but mild-hybrid petrol made up 12% of total registrations for the month. The remainder of sales was accounted for by diesel and mild-hybrid diesel vehicles, at 9.9% and 6.6% each.

Furthermore, electrified vehicles also made increases in the year-to-date sales figures, with electric cars accounting for 7.5% of total vehicle registrations so far in 2021.

Electric cars, hybrid and plug-in hybrid registrations in 2020.

2020 saw that new car registrations would be at their lowest point since 1992, with sales figures showing a decrease of 29.4% – good news, electric and plug-in hybrids made up a more significant portion of cars sold than ever before.

Ample electric models vastly made their way onto the list of top sellers in December 2020. The Tesla Model 3 selling strongly throughout lockdown and being the best-selling vehicle in December 2020, closely followed by the Volkswagen ID.3 in fourth place. Another vehicle that sold strongly all year round was the Vauxhall Corsa now available in pure-electric Corsa-e guise). It even came second overall for 2020. Although, the majority of these are conventionally powered. Other top models include the Mercedes A-class, the Volvo XC40 and the Volkswagen Golf.

Pure-hybrid cars still saw an increase in sales despite plug-in variants taking over by most manufacturers. 100,117 is the total sales in 2020, compared to the 98,237 sales in 2019. This shows a 12.1% increase.

Unfortunately, diesel-car registrations dipped by an astonishing 55%, while petrol sales dropped by 39% year-on-year. However, these figures do not take into account the industries move to mild-hybrid technology.