The UK market has witnessed rapid growth in sales of new electric vehicles in the UK, overtaking regular petrol cars to become the second most popular new vehicle type after petrol.
And the month of December 2022 recorded that battery electric vehicles (BEV) took the largest monthly share of the market, recording 32.9%, while the year 2022 as a whole accounted for 16.6% of the percentage of car registrations.
The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders has also revealed that the greening of the UK car market continues, with a record level of emissions in 2022 of 111 grams of carbon dioxide emitted per kilometer driven on average, which is a fraction of the global average on level it was a few years ago.
Mike House, CEO of the Association of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, said: “Innovation and the efforts of automakers have helped electric vehicles become the second most popular vehicle type, but for a country aiming to become a pioneer of electric mobility, this must be accompanied by policies and investments that help remove the uncertainty. The consumer on the transition to ownership of these cars and at least stations where drivers can recharge their cars.
The best-selling Tesla Y
The Tesla Model Y was Britain’s best-selling electric car and was the third best-selling car overall, behind the Nissan Qashqai and Vauxhall Corsa, which are currently offered in electric versions.
The Government’s Domestic Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Strategy predicted that the UK would require between 300,000 and 720,000 charging points by 2030.
Meeting the demand for fewer electric cars would require installing more than 100 new charging stations per day, knowing that the current rate is 23 stations per day.
This growth in electric car sales is largely due to users within institutions and businesses, while private car buyers remain more hesitant and concerned about distance and the difficulty of finding public charging stations.
It is worth noting that new car sales increased in the last five months of 2022, but this was not enough to offset the decline seen in the first half of the year, therefore total sales in 2022, which recorded 1.61 million cars, were 2% fewer than in 2021. This made for a disappointing year, as the latest market outlook report, released in October 2022, predicted 1.8 million cars would be registered in 2023 of new cars.
