Electric car registrations grew over the past 12 months in a UK car market that dropped overall by 2% with a total of 1,614,063 new cars registered in 2022. Figures are yet to recover to the levels seen in the 2010s where new registrations would frequently surpass 2,000,000.
In what was another difficult year for the automotive industry, it was the Tesla Model Y that finished out on top of the EV sales charts. In fact, the Model Y beat out all of its electric competitors by a large margin with only Tesla’s Model 3 coming close.
The Model Y had 35,551 registrations in 2022 which was followed by the Model 3 with 19,071. The only other EV model to get more than 10,000 UK registrations in 2022 was the Kia e-Niro (11,197).
Volkswagen’s ID.3 (9,832) finished 4th followed by the Nissan LEAF (9,178), MINI (7,425), Polestar 2 (7,345), MG 5 (7,030), BMW i4 (6,699) and the Audi Q4 e-tron (6,594) in 10th.
Battery electric vehicles were one of the few vehicle sectors to grow in 2022. 267,203 BEVs were registered in 2022 which is a 40% increase from the year before when 190,727 were registered. Both diesel and petrol registrations decreased by 38.9% and 10.4% respectively.
MHEV registrations dropped slightly overall whereas HEV registrations grew by 27.6%.
In relation to the car market as a whole, fully electric cars made up 16.6% and plug-in hybrids made up 6.3% meaning nearly 23% of new cars registered in 2022 could be plugged into a charger.
When taking ICE cars into account, it was the Nissan Qashqai that came 1st with 42,704 registrations. The Model Y trailed behind in 3rd, just behind the Vauxhall Corsa (35,910).
