The final official data for car registrations last year have been released by SMMT. Battery electric vehicles (BEV) ended the year with a market share of 19.6%, well below the ZEV mandate of 22%, despite a bumper December.
BEV registrations for the month were 56% compared to December 2023, which clearly is not a representative figure. Remember that these are registrations, not sales. It is therefore extremely likely that carmakers have been pre-registering thousands of EVs in order to get closer to their target. We also know they have been offering unaffordable discounts for purchases before the end of the year.
Either way, there appears to be no way that the BEV share will rise to the mandated 28% this year.
It is worth looking behind the numbers though.
First of all, EV take up in the private sector remains stubbornly low at one in 10. There is simply no way total EV sales will get anywhere target if private buyers, who account for 38% of the market, refuse to buy them.
Secondly, sales of petrol and diesels fell sharply in December, as carmakers cut back on production in order to artificially raise the ratio of EVs.
This is evident from the November manufacturing figures, which are 30% down on November 2023.
Registration of Ford cars last year in the U.K. fell by 23%, Nissan 12%, Toyota 8% and Vauxhall 21%. These are alarming figures, not least for the two Japanese companies.
Nissan, for instance, saw registrations fall from 100,000 to 89,000 between 2023 and 2024. Sales of the Leaf have been plummeting recently, and sales of the petrol/diesel Qashqai and Juke models account for 77,000 on their own. Clearly Nissan will miss the 22% target by a long way.
So will Toyota, which has been been specialising in hybrids in recent years. Late to the EV party, its only electric offering, the Toyota bZ4X, was introduced to the U.K. last June and costs over £40,000, well outside the affordability of the mass market sector. Toyota registrations fell from 108,000 to 101,000 last year. Expect more large cutbacks next year to reduce sales of petrol/diesel.
Neither Nissan or Toyota are in a strong position to meet the challenge of Chinese-made EVs, and there surely must be question marks over their future U.K. operations as they will no longer be viable under existing ZEV mandates.
Meanwhile, Chinese EV manufacturers Polestar and BYD clocked up 17,481 EV registrations in 2024, giving them 13,635 surplus ZEV allowances, which they may be able sell at a price close £15,000 each to carmakers who have fallen short of target and will otherwise have to pay that much in fines. That will hand Polestar and BYD a nice little windfall of £204 million!
Tesla too will rubbing its hands with glee, with its 50,334 registrations, potentially worth £600 million.
If you wanted to destroy the U.K. car industry, while enriching Chinese and U.S. manufacturers, I cannot think of a better way to do it.
This article was first published on Paul Homewood’s blog, Not a Lot of People Know That.
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