Blog Post

Battery Electric Vehicles outsold diesel as COVID-19 continues to hammer car market

Richard Simmonds • Sep 22, 2020

It’s been a grim time for the UK’s new car market with sales plummeting as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. However, thanks to the crash in sales, Battery electric vehicles (BEVs) were shown to have outsold all fuel types except petrol cars during the lockdown.

Is this a big deal?

With just 4,321 new cars being registered in April, a massive plunge from the 156,743 sales recorded in the previous month, BEVs outsold diesel cars for the first time.

1,374 BEVs were sold to make them the second most ‘popular’ vehicle type and saw its market share jump to 31.8%.

Many media outlets that report regularly on green issues and renewable energy have headlines hailing these figures as some sort of proof that demand for BEVs is surpassing demand for diesel cars.

In reality, it just highlights that wealthier people were not as put off from purchasing a new vehicle than the wider population despite the lockdown. The proof of this is in the pricing. Currently, BEVs remain out of the price range for the vast majority of the population.

Some critics of the government’s goal of achieving a NetZero economy have frequently stated that the price of BEVs is a major barrier on replacing all petrol and diesel cars with electric equivalents with some saying that the goal is simply unachievable.

Questions over the infrastructure needed to make the plans viable have also been raised. With most UK households not having garages or off-road parking the biggest issue is to how will people charge their cars.

Covid-19 decimating new car sales

With most households forced to work from home and millions put on furlough, consumers were forced to tighten the purse strings. With furlough due to end in October and with another lockdown feared, demand for new cars is likely to remain under intense pressure.

New car sales during the lockdown plummeted during lockdown with demand for petrol cars tumbling 98.5% and diesel cars falling 97.6%, in comparison demand for BEVS dropped just 9.7%, but then again the demand for such vehicles was never on a par with those other vehicle types.

Demand for BEVs rising?

With April seeing BEVs outselling Diesel for the first time there are solid signs that demand for such vehicles is growing.

The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders Ltd (SMMT) predicts that the BEV market will double this year.

“With the UK’s showrooms closed for the whole of April, the market’s worst performance in living memory is hardly surprising. These figures, however, still make for exceptionally grim reading, not least for the hundreds of thousands of people whose livelihoods depend on the sector,” said Mike Hawes, SMMT’s chief executive.

Even as the lockdown was eased in July BEVs retained their market share and data released in August showed that share rising to 9.75%, up from the 4.4% recorded in the previous year. The overall car market was down 5.8% compared to 2019 with just 87,000 units sold.

With rumours circulating in the press that the government is planning to bring forward its ban on new fossil fuel from 2040 to 2030 questions need to be asked as to whether this is possible.

Will Covid-19 put a spanner in the works?

The Covid-19 pandemic has ravaged the economy and now with fears growing of another lockdown concerns over whether the push towards a NetZero economy is realistic is growing in volume.

Boris Johnson is expected to accelerate the shift to electric vehicles this autumn with the announcement, one of a string of new clean energy policies to help trigger a green economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic.

All well and good, but how can this recovery occur if consumers and businesses are broke and struggling to survive financially?

Opportunity for energy suppliers

Even if the latest headlines are sensationalist there is no denying that BEVs are the future (whether we like it or not) as the government continues to press on with its green energy drive.

The introduction of new tariffs aimed specifically at BEV owners that offer consumers cheaper electricity overnight or those that reward smart EV charging could be particularly enticing for people looking to purchase an EV.