EV Sales Stall
By Paul Homewood
We’re three months into the year, and EV sales are still struggling to increase their share of the market:
https://www.smmt.co.uk/vehicle-data/car-registrations/
The government mandated target is 22% this year, but YTD EV registrations only account for 15.5%.
This is despite the fact that fleet sales have been booming this year, a sector with a much higher uptake of EVs because of beneficial tax allowances.
It is the private sector which has proven a much harder nut for EVs to crack, for the very simple reason that very few drivers actually want one.
Despite all of the subsidies, both overt and hidden, it appears that EV sales have hit a ceiling.
Where this will leave government policy remains to be seen, with the target increasing to 28% next year, and 33% the year after.
But it appears they will be between a rock and a hard place. The UK motor industry simply will not be able to afford to pay ZEV fines, which will run into the billions by then. As a result they will surely have to drastically cut back on production of ICE vehicles for the UK market.
And drivers will still refuse to buy unaffordable and useless EVs; instead they will accept long lead times for new cars, as a result of the inevitable shortage of stock, while keeping their old cars longer.
It is painfully obvious that both the government and the opposition parties have believed their own propaganda far too long, thinking that EVs are wonderful and that the public would be queuing up to buy them once a few more charging stations were built. Just as with many other matters, the Westminster establishment has totally lost contact with the real world.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Honestly, you couldn’t make up the idiocy of the Westminster establishment (unless there is something more sinister behind it – think UN/WEF, blackmail, bribes?)
I’m with your “conspiracy theory”, Philip except that it’s hardly a conspiracy as the UN, WEF et al have been completely open about their aim for a New World Order, build back better, tackling climate change, pandemic prepared, Agenda 2030 one-world governance.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they have honey-trapped the odd multi-billionnaire into providing financial support.
Our incumbent Uniparty politicians don’t have the guts to stand up to them. It remIns to be seen if Reform will. They don’t seem to be nearly as resolute as Heritage.
The difference between “conspiracy theory” & truth/fact is normally about 10yrs.
10 years?! More like 2 years or more recently just 6 months.
I had worked that something was criminally wrong with Covid by mid-2022, enough to accuse my MP of complicity (he never replied):
https://metatron.substack.com/p/an-open-letter-to-my-mp-culpable?utm_medium=email
Excellent!
The ‘Big Guy’ is Mao Tse Bung
A ‘conspiracy theory’ is any theory they don’t like. ‘Theory’ doesn’t need adjectives.
I knew the government (US) was whacky in Feb 2020 when Fauci gave instructions on how to wash your hands to kill the virus.
As a freshman biology student would point out, you don’t wash your hands to kill it, you wash them to get the virus off your hands. You couldn’t f…ing care less if it dies . . . that’s not the damn objective. The Federal head of the program doesn’t know BASICS, yet the press treats him as a god.
60% of all car purchases in March were by Fleet or business who have been incentivised to buy BEVs. Therefore it looks like far less than 5% of car sales were BEVs bought by private buyers. The majority of BEVs are bought by people that don’t have to drive them.
EV sales have not stalled
Up over 10% is not stalled
That’s a larger gain than ICE sales
And PHEV sales growth is almost four times larger ICE growth
That’s not stalling
The article title is misleading
If there is any conclusion possible, EV buyers are now favoring PHEVs over BEVs
RG : Whilst you may be correct in what you say it still remains the case that 85% of cars sold have an ice giving the impression that drivers wish to carry around a battery and electric motor simply because of the tax advantages.
A hybrid with any sort of ICE engine must be classed as an ICE vehicle. The hybrids are really just high efficiency and flexible ICE vehicles. Hybrid ICE sales will keep rising because they are efficient and flexible. Electric only BEVs will remain a niche that only grows market share with continuous subsidy. Too often statistics are confused by grouping Hybrid ICEs with BEVs. The are NOT in the same group. Hybrids are ICEs.
Hybrids still can have the same battery issues as EVs though, easily damaged, spontaneous combustion, expensive replacement. You are also carrying the extra weight of this dual propulsion system. It would be interesting also to know if a dead hybrid battery effectively disables the whole car. I’m supposing it doesn’t.
ilma360; a dead hybrid battery will disable the car if it’s one with an integrated starter/generator as this relies on said battery to start the car. Aiui, this is the case for many cars but I don’t know the proportion.
Richard the growth is purely in fleet sales. Business sales are down and private sales down even more. The man and woman in the street do not want EVs for a host of reasons which EVs are unlikely to overcome.
The proportion of sales made up by EVs has fallen. People simply don’t want to buy them
ROSS CLARK 5 April 2024
The trouble is, the proportion of sales made up by electric vehicles in March was only 15.2 per cent, and it going in the wrong direction. In March 2023, it was 16.2 per cent
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/04/05/evs-are-out-and-petrol-is-in-as-it-should-be/
The ZEV mandate requires 22%, otherwise the car industry gets fined £15,000 for every sale the government deems to be the ‘wrong’ kind of vehicle. Logic suggests this will lead to lower numbers of new ICEs on sale, as an alternative to massive fines that undermine profits.
Maybe not, oldbrew. Dealers might put a surcharge on new ICEVs to cover the cost of the fines. Depending on how the fabulous government sets up its assault on industry, maybe each new ICE gets a £5,000 to cover the fine.
Plebes crying about the cost of a new car will be told to take the bus.
Following the release of Climate the Movie we now can say with certainty that there is no climate emergency and so all these ridiculous rules on car purchases can be binned, along with all the net zero rubbish.
Expressed as a percentage, in your opinion how likely is it that the UK parliamentary estate will abandon all Net Zero targets and sound the greatest, most humiliating political retreat in 1000 years of UK history, at a stroke ruining all of their reputations and legacies for all of time? You may only select one answer.
Cheshire Red :
Correct. Which is why Net Zero will only be cancelled by a party that is not currently represented in Parliament.
I also cannot imagine the BBC abandoning CAGW and Net Zero willingly.
Quite possibly the only hope in the short term is the re-election of Trump ro the Presidency.
Longer term, would a decline in temperature enable a change of policy or is anthropogenic suicide now the UN’s policy?
EVs are totally impractical for 60 per cent of drivers because they do not have garage or driveway parking so they can’t charge at home. And that is perhaps the most important of so many reasons why EVs will never take off.
It IS that simple.
Come back in 3 years time Richard when the market has completely collapsed due to fleet sale 2nd hand EVs flooding the market that nobody wants as any sensible person would be suspicious of the batteries ability after that time , do you seriously believe the current uptake ( fleet sales, large tax incentives ) is driven by the public wishing to buy EV , short range , high price , high insurance vehicles over ICE vehicles ? thats a giant leap of faith
The CCC has mandated a halving of private car ownership by 2050*. The establishment are not pro-EV, they’re anti-personal transport.
*This is couched in wanting to see a 10 million reduction in vehicles by 2050 but given population growth and the requirement for more delivery vehicles to offset the decline in personal transport it’s practically equivalent.
Correct. EVs and heat pumps don’t get you to Net Zero. They are forcing a change that won’t even work.
Assuming that 550k represents 1/4 of the cars to be sold this year, that will be c 2.2 million by year end, 22% of which would be 484k BEVs. So need to sell another 400k out of a total of 1.636M = 24.5% – or an increase of 60% on current sales %age. No chance – it’s simply not happening!
Didn’t the CEO of Toyota say that he expected the EV market to top out at 30% ?
Way off topic but…just looked at your wordpress blog. Really good photography, particularly liked the butterfly photos. Beautiful stuff – thanks.
Thank you Ray.
Fleet sales!
An exposé of fleet sales would be interesting. Are public agencies or companies buying? Then who drives them / how much?
Is there, then, an intention of selling them into a “used” market? This is a future as opaque as a chunk of schist.
A neighbour has a job driving leased EVs that has got to the end of their leasing period back to the dealers. Would he buy an EV, no way. His main comment is about range anxiety. He finds the predicted range falls by 20% within a short distance of starting off and he has to minimise the use of heater and lights as well as keeping his speed down.
I read somewhere that 50% of EV owners have traded in their vehicle for a Petrol, Diesel or Hybrid in the last year, in the UK. Too much stress and anxiety plus lack of on street charging and impossible queues at peak holiday times being the reasons. That is to say they’re not dissatisfied with the vehicle, just the situation. Sorry I don’t have a link.
The new Labour government will have to re-set penalty charge targets, blaming the Tories for being ‘out of touch’. If they don’t then they’ll be condemning the UK car manufacturing market to certain failure.
A pox on all their houses.
The Grauniad has a piece today entitled ‘Is Musk’s behaviour to blame for Tesla’s poor performance?’
They twice quote the MD of a US financial service company who says the core issues were ” softening global demand for EVs and problems in China”
Front page of the London Times has the story – “EVs lose their spark as market share shrinks”. They’re still selling tho’
And it’s still hard to spot the logic when road haulage continues diesel and CO2 doesn’t affect the weather
This video is quite interesting. It’s about the rise in Hybrids over full electric in the US which appears to support Toyota’s concentration on the development of hybrids. This ties in with the sales figures in the table above. The video also makes the point that the change to electric should be market driven and not regulation driven.
The main users of EVs are the company-car owning elite. The tax breaks in terms of Benefits in Kind (BiKs) are massive and one would be mad not to exploit this. Of course the BiKs are funded willingly and happily by the rest of the tax payers in the interests of “saving the planet”.