The latest figures from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) confirm that 19.6% of all new UK cars registered throughout the year were electric vehicles (EVs).
This is a record annual volume – however, it is still below government-mandated sales targets of 22%.
The UK car market grew by 2.6% on the previous year, with 1,952,778 new cars reaching the road in 2024. The growth was dominated by fleet sales, which were up by 11.8% and accounted for 59.6% of all new car registrations.
While December 2024 marked a fifth consecutive month of growth for EV registrations in the UK, with 43,656 new battery electric vehicle (BEV) registrations accounting for 31% of the market, the SMMT called it a challenging year for the sector “as manufacturers strove to create demand for electric vehicles in a bid to meet new mandated sales targets”.
To create this demand, the SMMT reveals that manufacturer discounting totalled more than £4.5bn in 2024, an amount it says is unsustainable in the...