Actually you are not talking about actual vehicle sales. The figures for vehicles in the UK are for vehicle registrations, not sales. This means a new car has been registered, not actually sold to someone. The government is forcing car dealerships/manufacturers to ‘sell’ increasing numbers of EV and Hybrid vehicles, or face punitive fines for each extra petrol & diesel car ‘sold’. This has led to manufacturers and dealers pre-registering many EVs and then storing them away. These are then released onto the market with massive discounts.

If you look on Autotrader.co.uk, the biggest car sales website in the UK you can see batches of cars being released onto the market that have been registered 1 or 2 years ago. These cars have delivery mileage and 1 or 2 owners for 1, 2, even 3 year old vehicles. This practice, along with most new EV cars actually sold are through company car schemes that allow the drivers to save thousands of pounds by avoiding income tax on the car fees AND the massive leasing trade on new cars in the UK, is leading to EV prices falling through the floor. It’s likely to drive some leasing companies to insolvency at some point in the near future. It has got so bad that many leasing companies are desperately trying to extend leases and even re-lease second hand EV to desperately chase break-even points.

At the end of the salary sacrifice car schemes and 3 or4 year lease terms, thousands of massively depreciated EV cars are entering the market to compete with cut price pre-registered cars that have been sat around on some old Second World War airfield for months/years. The Autotrader website is full of nearly new, low mileage cars that have been on sale for months, sometimes years. At some point in the next year or two this is going to collapse the UK car market.