EVs Take Record 15% Share Of UK’s Used Car Market

Last month’s announcement that the UK would ban sales of new gasoline and diesel cars as of 2030 was most likely the reason why electric vehicle (EV) sales on the used car market in Britain surged to their highest market share ever—15 percent of used car sales in December, Motortrader reported, citing online car supermarket BuyaCar.co.uk.

In the middle of November, the UK government said it would ban the sales of new gasoline and diesel cars beginning in 2030. The ban is part of the UK’s Ten Point Plan for a Green Industrial Revolution unveiled last month and is coming into force 10 years earlier than planned. Sales of hybrid cars and vans that can drive a significant distance with no carbon coming out of the tailpipe will be allowed until 2035.  

Before the government’s announcement, BP said it supported the phase-out of gasoline and diesel cars and vans.

“As well as backing this phase-out, we believe it can - and should - be brought in sooner than 2040,” BP’s chief executive Bernard Looney said in September. 

“Whether that is 2035, 2032 or 2030 – we are up for it – and importantly we’re up for the measures and supporting policies to boost electrification and hydrogen in transport that are needed to make it possible,” Looney added.

The ban announced in November was likely the driver of the surging interest in second-hand EVs in December, BuyaCar.co.uk says.

“Searches have steadily increased over the past few weeks, to the point where more than one in 10 customers are arriving on our site with an EV in mind as their initial choice. And now we are seeing EVs taking 15% of the market, it is clear that a breakthrough is under way,” Christofer Lloyd, editor of BuyaCar.co.uk, said, quoted by Motortrader.

The UK’s new EV sales are also on the rise.

While the UK’s total new car sales slumped in November due to the second lockdown, EVs recorded their third-highest ever monthly share of registrations at 9.1 percent, the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) said last week. To compare, in November of 2019, the share of battery EVs of total new car registrations in the UK was just 3.0 percent.

By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com

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