Electric Car Sales Double in 2020 as Diesel & Petrol Registrations Slump.
More than double the number of battery electric vehicles (BEVs) have been sold so far this year compared to the whole of 2019 – in a ‘watershed moment’ for the sector.
Registrations of diesel cars have more than halved over the same time period, with petrol cars faring much the same.
Figures from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) show that 86,291 pure electric cars were registered between January 2020 and November 2020, up from 37,850 last year.
Registrations for new diesels have fallen sharply over the same period – down 57.8% from 583,488 over the course of 2019 to just 245,959 so far this year.
Petrol cars have suffered a similar fate, with 845,467 vehicles sold between January 2020 and November 2020. More than 1.4 million were sold for the whole of last year.
Even isolated stats for November tell a powerful story, with BEV sales more than doubling from 4,652 in 2019, to 10,345 in 2020 – a 122% increase.
When comparing November 2019 and November 2020, diesel and petrol car sales fell by 56.2% and 41.9% respectively.
BEVs continue to enjoy a growing share of the market claiming 9.1% of all car sales last month (up from 3.0% in Nov 2019) and 5.8% of the market for the year so far (up from 1.5% for the same period in 2019).
Conventional combustion engines became less popular as diesels accounted for 14% of the market last month (down from 23.2% in November 2019). Petrol cars made up 49.1 % of the market in November 2020, (down from 61.4% in November 2019).
