electric vehicles: intro
Sales of new cars dried up almost completely for a few weeks during the first Coronavirus lockdown last year, but when they came back, something had changed – permanently
Electric car charges ahead
Mark Bursa
T
HE RECOVERY HAS SEEN A significant shift toward electric vehicles rather than petrol or diesel. The shift has been so dramatic that the Government’s goal of ceasing all petrol and diesel new car sales by 2030 has gone from looking fanciful to realistic. Was it the pandemic that focused the minds of car buyers, who noticed a remarkably cleaner atmosphere last April and May when we really were locked down? Or is it simply because car manufacturers’ planned EV launches are now happening? In 2020, UK car registrations fell by
14
By the numbers Best-selling battery electric vehicles in Europe, 2020 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 8 10
Renault Zoe Tesla Model 3 Volkswagen ID3 Hyundai Kona Volkswagen eGolf Peugeot e208 Kia eNiro Nissan Leaf Audi E-tron BMW i3
99,261 85,713 56,118 47,796 33,650 31,287 31,019 30,916 26,454 23,113
Source: JATO Dynamics
29.4%, and the total of 1.63 million cars sold was the lowest total since 1992. Against this collapse, plug-in vehicles took a 10% share of the market – a massive increase on the 3% or so achieved in 2019, when the market topped 2.3 million. Certainly, there is a considerably greater choice of EVs on the market now – it wasn’t long ago that you had a choice of Tesla or Nissan Leaf, and when new models arrived, such as Kia e-Niro or Hyundai Ioniq EV, eager potential buyers found themselves at the bottom of months-long waiting lists. Now, as we’ll see, the choice is much greater – though not all sectors are well
JUNE 2021
