EV Sales In Decline To Private Buyers
By Paul Homewood
Detailed data reveals that private motorists have stopped buying
Hopes for the mainstream adoption of electric cars have been punctured by figures revealing a fall of more than 11 per cent in the sale of zero-emission vehicles to private buyers.
The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders has said that motorists are holding back from the switch because of continued uncertainty about whether a government ban on petrol and diesel cars will be enforced, the cost of electric vehicles, the cutting of financial incentives, and fears about the lack of a public recharging network.
Ministers and the industry have previously hailed rising sales of electric cars as a sign that Britain is ready to move from the “early adopter” stage of battery electric vehicle (BEV) ownership to mass market.
However, the number of electric cars bought by private owners has fallen from more than one in three of the BEV market to less than one in four in just a year. Figures for the first half of the year showed a 32 per cent surge in BEV sales to 152,000 cars, accounting for a sixth of all new registrations.
However, detailed data reveals that private motorists have stopped buying.
The vast majority of new BEV registrations this year — more than 75 per cent — were with fleets and business owners, which can take advantage of company car tax breaks, the benefits-in-kind regime and salary-sacrifice schemes that mean running an electric car attracts dramatically less tax.
In the first half of this year, 37,000 new electric cars were registered to private retail-buying motorists, or just 24.2 per cent of all BEVs. That is down from the 41,800 BEVs sold to private motorists in the first half of last year when retail buyers accounted for 36.3 per cent of all electric car sales.
The fall coincides not only with the cost of living crisis but also with the scrapping of the “plug-in car grant”, which at one stage was worth up to £5,000 off a new electric car.
Full story
I have strongly suspected for a long time that most EVs are bought by businesses and fleets, but have never found that data to back it up.
This new study in The Times not only shows that EV sales to private buyers has actually dropped year-on-year. It also indicated that about 8% of private sales are BEV.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
In the Decline, eh? My Mate in the trade tells me that Private buyers seldom “Bought” their vehicles … all on those fancy named Contract Hires … walk away when there’s a problem, or WALK to work when the Mileage limit is reached after 6 months if you can’t find a cheap alternative to buy outright & Insure week by week. But it still looks good on the New House Doorstep with a Flat tyre and Algae / BirdPoo Flags. ” L@@K at me , look what I’ve got ” ..Sure! I think to myself. Something tells me a Lifestyle is coming to an end.
Recent stories in Trade Mags suggest it is only really the SERVICE sector which can push / hold EV Progress… think about that one.
And let’s not forget about the virtue signalling brownie points of the green flash on the number plate!
Well, the govt seems to be very generous with our own money whether its furlough or subsidies for solar panels heat pumps or EV’s so I guess the obvious solution is for them to give us all an EV on a 3 year lease?
Without incentives there is no business case for this technology. Business purchases are not a sign of acceptance because of the trade off incentives and they are not the only car available to the family. I wonder if anyone has done a review of the second hand market?
… or a Review of the Insurance write off’s of EV’s, due to the cost of the battery if even only slightly damaged …..
“I wonder if anyone has done a review of the second hand market?”
YouTuber “Geoff Buys Cars” did a couple of videos earlier this year, in which he described that some auctions were seeing 2-3 year old EV’s fail to sell at multiple consecutive auctions, finally being disposed of to ridiculously low bids, when the original dealers were becoming desperate to shift them. He also compared depreciation values with similar diesel & petrol vehicles, and the results were frightening…
I followed up on that at Geoff Buys Cars…pretty devastating!
What have the following got in common:
1. Blowing up coal fired power stations before there life is finished
2. Renewables
3. Buying EV’s
Answer: Destruction of capital.
Exactly. I know 3 EV / hybrid drivers. All are in business and all chose the cars only due to excessively generous tax incentives.
No tax benefits, no deal.
The whole EV thing is an unfolding disaster.
And, intuitively, I am guessing most private EV sales are to two car families where the EV is a second or runabout car backed up by an ICE vehicle.
If this is the case then, once again, the sharp elbowed middle classes are gaining the most from any taxpayer funded subsidy and support schemes.
Exactly! Of the 5 BEV owners I know, 4 are company cars and 1 a private owner who has long standing subsidised solar panels. The latter still gets paid for theoretically exporting 50% 0f generation but rather uses excess generation to charge up the car. They all have ICE cars as well and use them for any serious motoring. Absurd situation to fund the well off at the expense of everyone else.
This was in 2021:
Two-thirds of all new electric cars bought in the UK are purchased by businesses, rather than private buyers, according to a leading industry body. The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT), which records ‘official’ figures on new car sales and production, says the growth in the electric car market is being driven by the corporate sector.
https://uk.motor1.com/news/497048/ev-sales-driven-businesses-smmt/
The tax breaks for purchase as a company car favour EVs
Like for like comparison – EV Benefit in Kind for company car (Volvo XC40) is 7% that of ICE – to translate to numbers tax payable for EV £382 pa v ICE £5173. That, plus three year contract lease so no exposure to depreciation is why the majority of EV’s are company cars. Once drive to EV has reached critical mass, BIK tax benefit will be eroded away I am sure.
Just like the HMRC to realise they’ve cocked things up on the generous side and revert to type.
I have long believed we were all being led down a favourite path of the totalitarians. Firstly pick an unsuitable technology. Then delete choice. At which point it can be announced there isn’t enough of this and that, so you can’t all have cars. This, of course, also ties in nicely with the ‘need’ to ration electricity. Because again, choice was removed. And why govt have so many diesel generators for themselves. Shortages are so clear and understandable to the public. Govt just need to hide that they created the shortage.
There is nowhere near enough generation for EVs .For just 20% of them to charge up at any time would need another 100% increase in generation capacity .Not only that , but most 20th Century housing is supplied on the basis that the average home uses 10 KWh per day , so there will be about 50 houses on a local substation which has a max of about 250 KW on end user voltage . So it will be impossible for even half of them to run 7KW home chargers at the same time .
Which is why they must be on a ” Smart Meter ” so that it can be turned off for grid blackouts , which will be a normal everyday thing if many people get EVs .
The whole idea is to sell gullible people a very expensive piece of equipment which they can not use as they do not want the public to be able to drive .
To which you can add that there are not enough materials to build them either before you can even charge them.
It would also be interesting to know how many private buyers are replacing like with like, i.e. are buying an EV to replace an EV, how many are new EV buyers and how many are switching back to an ICE from an EV.
Apart from the 93% reduction in BIK tax for company cars, any contract/lease owners have the advantages of giving the keys back after three years – by which stage new technology/costs/taxes will be clear. I’d be surprised if there are many sensible people who would whack down 100% cash or take 100% ownership for such an expensive evolving technology. If 2/3 are company owned vehicles, what proportion of the balance 1/3 actually own the car (not lease and therefore can hand back?)
A few weeks back I did an internet search into whether EV manufacturers were losing money. The first page came up with –
Feb 2023 survey of 15, 000 drivers by the AA found 18% plan to buy an EV next down from 25% in 2022.
EV start up Lucid losing $500,000 + for every car it sells
In 12 years of selling EVs Tesla has never made a profit
GM will lose money on its EVs till 2025
Ford says it will lose $3bn on EVs in 2023
Glad to see the EV revolution is going so well 🙂
No business model survives the control of politicians.
Data on vehicle types can be found here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/vehicle-licensing-statistics-data-tables
There are a lot of different tables and they go right down to a district level so are pretty big and some of them only go up to first Q 2023 (not sure whether this is calendar or fiscal). I can’t find a particular table specific to EVs (BEV, HEV and PHEV) that I found on the site a few months ago but it is clear that most BEV purchases are by companies.
I also noted a report in the Times a few weeks ago bigging up EV sales which combined all types of EV and a large proportion were HEVs (i.e. ICE plus small non-plug-in battery). I am on my second HEV and contend that they are a sensible way of eking out petrol.
Lease companies are pretty sharp on the financials so if the product is losing acceptance they will be the first to step back. If that is what is happening then it is a strong sign that the market for EVs is collapsing.
When something like this happens you can understand people’s reluctance to buy a BEV
A CAR owner has shared his shock after finding out how much he would have to fork out to fix his EV after its battery went wrong.
Lee was on the M1 motorway when a piece of wood fell off the back of a lorry and went under his car with an “almighty thud”.
“After that incident the car seemed to be overheating and it didn’t charge properly until it stopped charging altogether,” he explained.
Lee is one of many EV owners to face a series of frustrations with their electric vehicles.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/motors/23993678/garage-battery-porsche-leeds/
Poor old Lee, my heart bleeds. Caveat emptor!
Lucky it didn’t burst into flames….
I don’t know anybody who wants a less practical vehicle than what they already have. And that’s without even looking at the price.
Another relevant data point – UK Gov makes approx £25bn pa in fuel duty on ICE engines. That lost tax revenue will have to be replaced (as part of the annual £1.2trn spend) if the subsidised drive to EV usage continues.
The Public Accounts Committee report ‘Achieving Net Zero: Follow Up’ (April 2022) noted that revenue from fuel duty and VED brought in £37bn to the Treasury in 2019-20.
See: https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-drivers-are-losing-interest-in-electric-cars/#comments-container
I am having a major schadenfreude experience on the woes in the BEV marketplace, it is just a wonderful failure of basic economic theory.
Trying to influence the basic supply and demand curve by offering and then withdrawing subsidies is pretty stupid. Not installing a viable charging infrastructure is, to say the least, rather an obvious oversight. Failing to realise that the increased use of electricity for personal transport will actually overload the grid system, both in terms of generation and local distribution, leading to rationing, probably by high pricing and eventually physical load shedding (blackouts).
Now the local BEV manufacturers are pleading with the government NOT to revoke the 2030 ban on sales of ICE vehicles, as they are relying on that to boost BEV sales.
“Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!” (Sir Walter Scott, 1808)
According to the IEA Global EV Outlook 2023 60% of EV sales of 10m in 2022 were in China and the country has more than half of all EVs on the road. But China has had to reinstate subsidies until 2027 at a cost of £56.9bn whilst Chinese EV manufacturer Nio has had to slash price to try and move stock. Other Chinese manufacturers are also having problems moving stock.
Perhaps why they are now aggressively entering the export market.
All the ‘public’ charging points are paid for by the taxpayer. Who ever heard of an oil company demanding that the taxpayer should pay for building forecourts!
Most of which, in East Devon, seem to be empty. Apart that is from the M5 services at Exeter, filled up with Londoners travelling up and down from their holiday homes in Devon and Cornwall!
From a contact at a London Licenced Taxi Garage a while ago. “We have just heard of the highest quote for a replacement battery for an LEVC taxi, £19,000 (19,000).” The batteries are in warrenty for five years, after that, its down to you. With the finance deal, these taxis can cost over £100,000 for what is basically a Volvo with a few more seats. A full charge when new gives you approximately 80miles and after a short time of charging this drops to 60 miles. Just enought to get to LHR and back from central London. As they are hybrids, most drivers are running them on petrol. Drivers who take the finance deal are exchanging them at three years and the process starts again. The exchanged vehicles, some are sold on, but most sit on the dealers forecourt as the taxi garages aren’t willing to take a chance on them.
The price looks steep for a hybrid’s battery.
EV cabs are essentially a BEV with a small battery and a diesel-engined charger on board. What colossal stupidity.
Oh dear, so sad, never mind.
The National Trust’s £1.6bn investment portfolio has lost millions in value after it was partly moved into the hands of eco-friendly wealth managers.
It comes as the charity races to hit net zero carbon emissions by 2030 and pledges to divest from fossil fuels.
Robeco Climate Global Credits Fund, which strives “to keep the global temperature rise to well below 2C” through its investments, was selected in 2021 to take on a portion of National Trust assets, which is worth 6.1pc.
But the fund has since seen the allocation tank by over £11m, 11.7pc, between March 2022 and February this year.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/net-zero/national-trust-loses-millions-green-investments-net-zero/
What about lorries? The 12 wheel Danish artic full of bacon that’s just rolled past? Ban it? Electrify it? Is the point of EVs clean air or sumpn?