After a stronger performance in March, the UK new car market fell back into a slump in April. Registrations were down across both private and fleet sectors, with the only bright spot being continued growth for both EVs and plug-in hybrids.
Overall new car registrations fell by 10% compared to last April, according to numbers published this morning by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT). Private sales were down by 8%, while fleet numbers fell by 12%. This was the biggest fall in monthly sales numbers for the year to date – January and February were down slightly, while March was up by 12%. In total year-to-date registrations, the market is still up by 3% on the first four months of last year.
EVs and plug-in hybrids lead the way
Despite the usual claims from the SMMT and other lobbyists that the sky would fall once EVs had to start paying more road tax, the data should this not to be the case at all – albeit, we’re only one month into the new road tax rules where EVs have to pay both road tax (£10 in the first year, £175 in subsequent years) plus the Expensive Car Supplement of (£410/year for the first five years) if their list price is more than £40K.
While registrations of petrol and diesel cars fell by 22% and 26%, respectively, the numbers for EVs grew by 18% and plug-in hybrids by 34%. Regular hybrids without the benefit of a plug fell by 3%.
The continued growth in plug-in hybrid numbers is interesting, as it appears to be coming at the expense of basic hybrids and petrol/diesel cars, rather than from potential EV sales. Car companies can use plug-in hybrid registrations as partial credits towards their mandated EV sales targets, so it’s inevitable that those brands that don’t have any (or many) EVs to offer will be pushing plug-in hybrids instead.
What’s also interesting is that there are very few plug-in hybrids that fall below the £40K ‘expensive car’ threshold, which tends to show that the additional road tax burden isn’t all that burdensome, so there’s no great reason to fear it for EVs either.
There is change in the wind for plug-in hybrids, however, with new EU standards coming into effect this year to reassess their overall CO2 emissions. This is likely to see many, if not most, plug-in hybrids reclassified with higher emissions levels that more accurately reflect their real-world fuel usage. That, in turn, will see both road tax and benefit-in-kind tax increasing for many plug-in hybrid vehicles here in the UK, which will presumably blunt sales to a degree.
Good month, bad month
Despite an overall market fall of 10%, not every brand saw a sales slide. As always, there was considerable variation in the market.
It was a good month for Alfa Romeo, Alpine, BYD, Cupra, Jeep, Kia, Mazda, Mini, Peugeot, Polestar, Renault and Vauxhall. All of these brands outperformed the market by at least 10% in April.
Meanwhile, things were not so good for Audi, Bentley, Citroën, DS Automobiles, Fiat, Genesis, GWM, Honda, KGM, Lexus, Maserati, MG, SEAT, Smart, Subaru, Suzuki, Tesla, Toyota and Volkswagen. All of these brands underachieved against the overall market in April (so saw registrations fall by at least 20%).
That means that the following brands were about where you’d expect them to be: Abarth, BMW, Dacia, Ford, Hyundai, Ineos, Land Rover, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, Porsche, Skoda and Volvo. All of these brands were with 10% (plus or minus) of the overall market fall.
Star brand of the month was BYD, which grew its registrations by almost 2,200 units over last year – an increase of 654%. Obviously, BYD is a new brand that’s very much on the up and expanding its product range, but it was still an impressive increase given the overall market fell by 10%.
Going in the other direction, the biggest loser for April was Volkswagen, whose registrations fell by almost 2,800 units or 21% on last April’s numbers. However, Volkswagen remained the UK’s best-selling brand for the month, ahead of Kia, BMW, Audi and Ford.
Sportage and Puma continue their sales battle
The Kia Sportage was back on top as the UK’s best-selling new car in April, edging out the Ford Puma and continuing the battle between the two cars that ran all through last year. In year-to-date sales, the Puma retains a lead of nearly 2,000 units after four months thanks to its stellar performance in March.
The Vauxhall Corsa had another strong month to finish in third place, ahead of the British-built Nissan Qashqai. There were three UK-built cars in the top ten this month, with the Nissan Juke placing seventh and the Mini Cooper in tenth. We’ll have our usual breakdown of the top ten in a separate article shortly.
