Today the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) has released new figures setting forth new car registrations in April 2021 – and there are now officially more than 500,000 plug-in vehicles on UK roads.
While the impact of the April lockdown in 2020 provides some interesting percentage change this month, there are still some very useful figures. It’s great to see, for instance, that plug-in vehicles – battery electric vehicles (BEVs) and plug-in hybrids (PHEVs) – attracted a solid 13.3% of market share in April 2021.
More interesting still is the growth in plug-in sales between 2021 year-to-date and the same period in 2020. So far in 2021, 77,144 new plug-in vehicles have been sold – an increase of 131% on the same period last year.
The chart above shows the number of registrations and the market share of plug-in vehicles each month over the past 13 months. As you can see, April 2021 saw a total of 18,752 new electric vehicle registrations, comprising 9,152 BEVs and 9,600 PHEVs.
This takes the cumulative total of plug-in vehicles on UK roads – as of the end of April 2021 – to 515,000 (approx. 245,000 BEVs and 270,000 PHEVs). In terms of market share, plug-in sales were at 13.3% last month.
The graph above shows that April 2021 was another good month for plug-in vehicle sales. Electric vehicles made up 13.3% of overall vehicle sales, meaning they represent 13.6% of market share in 2021 year-to-date. So far in 2021, BEVs represent 7.2% of market share, with PHEVs at 6.4%.
While March saw the Tesla Model 3 break into the top ten cars sold in the UK, no plug-in vehicle made the top ten in April. However, sales of electric vehicles continue to grow strongly, with 2021’s plug-in market share holding a consistent three percentage points above 2020.
At the same time, the UK’s charging point infrastructure continues to grow at pace. Only last week, the UK reached 15,000 charging locations on Zap-Map.
