Electric Car Stats, Facts & Figures: An overview of the UK and global market
loveelectric
Making electric vehicles more attractive, more affordable and more accessible by halving your monthly car costs.
There’s a lot of data, statistics, facts and figures concerning electric cars. We’ve consolidated the most important and poignant for complete ease of access and will be sharing them over the course of three articles.
Here’s an overview of our statistics roundup:
loveelectric helps you get behind the wheel of an electric car for a fraction of the monthly cost. Fancy a Tesla Model 3 for up to 50% off??Get in touch.
Electric car statistics UK
Since 2019, manufacturers have been scrambling to offer up as many all-electric models as possible. With the average development of a car from concept to sales floor?being around two to five years, the amount of electric cars sold year-on-year since 2018 seems even more impressive.
By the end of 2022, many project that sales of?electric cars could shoot up to 300,000 units.?September’s stats make this a hefty goal, but encouraging nonetheless.??
With the all-electric revolution in full swing, let’s take a look at how healthy the UK’s electric car market is.
September 2022 marked the registration of the?1,000,000th (one millionth) plug-in car?in the UK - a huge milestone. Not only that, but September also saw the cumulative number of?pure electric cars on UK roads reach over 572,000.?
So, with over half a million on the road, what were the best selling electric cars of 2021?
It will probably come as no surprise to most that the Tesla Model 3 takes the top spot, selling nearly 3x as many units as its closest rival. The Model 3’s reign will long continue; however, the Kia Niro EV stands as one of the best deals in motoring, full stop. Its combination of range, practicality and bulletproof reliability all come at an incredibly affordable monthly lease price.
If you’d like a more detailed rundown of?how much?loveelectric’s salary sacrifice can save you on an electric car, we’ve gone through some real-world examples of exactly how much it’d cost to take out a lease with us.
Electric vans
It’s not just electric cars that are seeing a dramatic uptick in popularity though. Electric light commercial vehicles, such as vans, are becoming more prevalent up and down the country.?As of September 2022, there were c.30,000 all-electric vans on UK roads.?
This rapid uptake is mainly due to the vast increase of models on offer. Vans like the Ford E-Transit and E-Transit Custom offer businesses a familiar and reliable workhorse - without the associated emissions from dirty diesel engines. It’s especially useful for business operators in London, who are able to swerve the Congestion Charge and ULEZ payment entirely thanks to the zero tailpipe emissions an all-electric van offers.
2021 was also the year that saw?a 240% increase in growth for electric van registrations upon the previous year.?We’ll touch on this in more detail later, but it’s incredibly important if we’re to reach our net zero goals, for heavy industry to make the switch to all-electric powertrains.?
The used electric car market
As our previous graph demonstrates, the mass uptake of electric cars only really began in 2019. This put the used electric car market on hold. But as 36 month lease deals came to an end, HP terms were completed and a plethora of new models hit the market - a strong used market began to emerge.
In 2021, demand increased by 119.2% resulting in?40,228 second-hand electric cars being sold.?Now, with?7,530,956 used cars changing hands?the same year, c. 40,000 electric cars doesn’t sound like many.
But,?by the end of Q2 2022, electric cars accounted for 1 in every 105 used car transactions - a boost of 57.1%. This ever-increasing figure is a big win for electric cars.?
An even more encouraging prediction is that electric cars will edge out diesel cars in popularity among buyers by the year’s end. Month-on-month, statistics show an increasing lack of popularity for the coal-rolling combustion engine -?down another 14.5% in September 2022.
To round out the UK statistics, let’s take a brief look at the latest sales figures.
Number of new electric cars sold in the UK by month in 2022:
Total number of electric cars YTD: 175,614
(Source:?SMMT)
Want to beat the used market and get a brand new electric vehicle for up to 50% off the traditional monthly lease cost??Join the thousands who already?loveelectric.
领英推荐
Electric vehicle sales statistics
Now that we’ve got a firm understanding of how the UK’s electric car market is looking, let’s zoom out and examine how EVs are doing globally. After all - if the planet is to reach its Net Zero Goal by 2050, the vast majority of personal transport will need to be decarbonised.?
Which OEMs are selling the most electric cars?
As would be expected, Tesla dominates all-electric car sales across the globe. The American automaker holds an?18% share of all EVs sold worldwide?- an astronomical figure when taking into account the number of competitors.
Here’s a rundown of the automakers leading the way in?global EV sales?(as of 2022 H1):
With Tesla shifting in excess of 200,000 units more than its closest competitor, Musk’s all-electric brainchild certainly has the market in its grip.
However, companies such as BYD and General Motors (now a subsidiary of Wuling Motors) are certainly nipping at the heels of the top spot. Neither are household names to drivers in the UK. But both companies are investing hugely in the Asia Pacific market - producing nearly all of the electric cars on offer to the Chinese market.
The result is a clear split between Western and Eastern markets. Tesla has a monopoly over Europe and North America, with BYD and Wuling Motors battling for the incredibly important Chinese domestic market.
Some of the globe’s most established automakers - Honda, Toyota and the Stellantis group, for example - are really falling behind with their electric offerings.?
For now at least, here’s how the world’s largest automakers are shaking up.
Largest manufacturers by market cap:
(Source:?Companies Market Cap)
What’s extraordinary, is Tesla’s market cap of $690.76 B is around?$90 B?more than the trailing seven OEMs’ market cap?combined?- topping out at $598.15 B.
As would be expected, this market domination translates to cars on the road. Below are the globe’s best-selling electric cars of 2021.
The globe’s best-selling electric cars of 2021
(Source:?Statista)
Unsurprisingly, the Model 3 and Model Y alone accounted for 912,000 of all electric cars sold across the globe in 2021. Eastern outlier Wuling (parent company of General Motors) managed to eke out the Tesla Model Y to the number two spot with the HongGuang Mini EV.
This little electric car couldn’t have a more divergent design philosophy to the Tesla, but may just represent a revolutionary way of considering what an electric car can - or indeed should - be.
(Source: Wuling via?Wired)
So, what’s the best deal in all-electric motoring?
With a retail price equivalent to only ￡3,400, the Wuling HongGuang Mini EV may just be?the?most affordable way to get behind the wheel of an electric car. For that price, expectations may be low. Simply nothing more than a novelty.
But that’s not the case. With a range of 106 miles from its dinky 13.9kWh battery and a top speed of 62mph - the HongGuang Mini EV may just be the perfect city car.
Unfortunately the Wuling Mini EV isn't available via our salary sacrifice scheme. But we do have every electric car sold in the UK market available - why not see how much you could save on the latest models here?
===
This is just a fraction of the stats and facts we've compiled. We'll be covering battery facts and charging statistics next time, or you can read the post in its entirety here.
Fancy contributing to the registration of electric cars in the UK? See how much you could save on the latest electric car ?? https://www.loveelectric.cars/