The variety of new automobiles purchased by UK non-public patrons final yr was fewer than in 2020, when the nation was within the midst of the Covid pandemic.
Round 746,000 automobiles have been offered to personal patrons in 2024, some 1000 fewer than 5 years in the past, when automotive shopping for was briefly halted by lockdowns. It was additionally down 8.7% on 2023.
Regardless of this, automotive gross sales nonetheless rose 2.6% on 2023 to 1.95 million. Nonetheless, 1.16m of those have been fleet gross sales (up 11.8% yr on yr), accounting for six in 10 new automobiles offered.
It is a worrying place to be in, Society of Motor Producers and Merchants (SMMT) boss Mike Hawes stated, because the break up between non-public and fleet gross sales was nearer to even.
Hawes blamed the drop in non-public gross sales on “the confusion for patrons of which automobile to purchase”, a remark geared toward blended messaging from the federal government over the previous few years.
This was a key cause for a lot of automotive makers not hitting the federal government’s zero-emissions automobile (ZEV) mandate goal of twenty-two%, the SMMT claimed, with only one in 10 new automobiles offered to personal patrons being battery-powered.
A market share of 19.6% was, though underneath the goal, a document for EVs – one of many few positives to come back from the yr. Throughout 2024, 381,959 EVs have been offered, up 21.4% on 2023 – the yr’s largest riser.
This complete made EVs the second hottest automotive sort behind petrol (1.02 million gross sales) and ‘self-charging’ hybrids (261,396).
In an indication of the instances, petrol automotive gross sales have been down some 40,000 on 2023 and fewer than 125,000 diesel automobiles have been offered.
“This needs to be a hit story, with a document share of EV gross sales and [overall] numbers up,” Hawes instructed journalists at a year-end briefing. ”However as a substitute the price of delivering that, and that [EV sales] are nonetheless shy of the federal government’s ZEV targets, forged a shadow.”
He added: “If we didn’t have the [ZEV] mandate, we might say that this was a very good yr.”
Hawes used the 2024 outcomes to once more name on the federal government to convey again shopping for incentives for EV patrons, which have been pulled in 2022. This might be within the type of lowered VAT on automotive purchases and VAT parity between public and residential charging.
“Incentives make an enormous distinction, as they assist individuals into these automobiles whereas additionally sending the fitting messages,” stated Hawes.
He added that fleet incentives – delivered through benefit-in-kind tax breaks – needs to be transferred to personal patrons.
Equally, Kia UK boss Paul Philpott instructed Autocar: “There aren’t sufficient carrots for the shoppers, aside from in fleet market, and the fleet user-chooser is proving that the place they’ve comparatively smart incentives behind electrical automobiles, patrons wish to strive them; the place there aren’t, they’re extra reticent to maneuver in numbers.”
