By Paul Homewood
Electric vehicle demand continues to falter and just one in four new battery cars are purchased by private buyers, according to latest industry data.
The number of car registrations across all fuel types grew 14.3 per cent and saw the most motors sold in an October for five years, new Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) data shows.
However, appetite for EVs is dwindling and it means manufacturers are now at real risk of missing costly targets requiring them to increase their zero-emission car sales from January.
The automotive trade body has reacted by calling on the Chancellor to ‘introduce incentives and facilitate infrastructure investment’ in the upcoming Autumn Statement in a bid to boost EV uptake.
A total of 153,529 car registrations in October was 7.2 per cent above pre-pandemic levels and the best performance in the month since 2018.
However, the statistics reveal that EV uptake isn’t accelerating as fast as manufacturers need it to in order to avoid costly penalties levied from 2024.
The data shows that EV uptake did grow for a 42nd consecutive month in October, rising 20.1 per cent year-on-year with 23,943 registrations in total.
Yet, private registrations accounted for fewer than one in four EVs bought, with large fleets fuelling the majority of sales in a stark indication that consumer demand is waning.
The volume of registrations last month means EVs made up only 15.6 per cent of all car sales, which is a long way short of the 22 per cent required of manufacturers from next year when the Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) mandate is introduced.
The annually-increasing thresholds of the mandate were rubberstamped in September, just days after the Government confirmed the delay to the ban sales of new petrol and diesel cars by five years from 2030 to 2035 – a move experts say has played a significant part in stalling electric car demand in recent weeks.
Mainstream car makers that fail to meet the ZEV’s increasing sale targets from next year face substantial penalties or will be forced to purchase EV credits from other brands, such as Tesla and Polestar that only sell battery cars.
Fines amount to £15,000 for every car short of the binding targets. For vans, manufacturers will have to pay £9,000 per vehicle next year, before the van payment increases to £18,000 for the rest of the regulation’s timeframe.
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Private buyers account for about 44% of all car sales.
Working back from the SMMT data, private sales of BEVs must have been about 5900 in October, out of a total private registrations of 62915. In other words, BEVs only account for 9% of private sales.
There is only so much appetite for EVs amongst business and fleet buyers, so the government is going to get nowhere its targets whilst thee private market remains moribund
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November 7, 2023 at 08:57AM
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