It was a predictably disappointing end to a difficult year of new car sales in the UK, with the only bright spot being another strong month for new EV registrations – although even that was not as positive as it may seem.
According to data published today by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT), private new car sales were down 2% in December compared to the same month last year. Combined with a flat result for fleet registrations, that meant the overall market was also flat for the month, just 0.2% down on last December.
That means that for the whole year 2024 numbers, private new car sales were down 9% compared to 2023, while fleet registrations were up 12%, for an overall market result of 3% growth.
With a total of just over 746,000 new cars registered to private customers for the full 12 months, 2024 was the worst year for private new car sales in at least a quarter of a century. There are mitigating factors for this, but the simple fact is that there have been fewer consumers walking into dealerships and buying new cars every year since 2015.
Record number of EVs registered
The brightest spot in the figures was the strong performance of electric vehicles (EVs), which made up 31% of all registrations. However, all is not as it seems here. A lot of these “sales” were actually car manufacturers and dealers registering cars to themselves rather than to real customers. Many of these cars will be pressed into service as dealer demonstrators, service loan vehicles, employee company cars or press fleet vehicles, or they’ll simply be parked up in a field for at least three months before being sold by the dealers as used cars. This is all to do with the UK’s zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) mandate, which required the car industry to ensure that at least 22% of all new cars sold in 2024 were EVs (minus an allowance for plug-in hybrids and some other loopholes that brought the real targets down or most car manufacturers).
Registrations for petrol and diesel cars both tumbled during December, which is almost completely related to the ZEV mandate as well. For those companies who simply couldn’t register enough EVs, another alternative was to simply sell fewer non-electric cars. Interestingly, this didn’t seem to affect hybrid registrations, which were about where we’d expect them to be based on full-year data.
So the year ended with almost 382,000 new EVs registered, up 21% from last year’s 314,000 cars. That equates to a market share of just under 20% (compared to 16.5% last year) – which is close enough to exceed the 22% mandate once the various loopholes and credit swaps are all exploited.
Good month, bad month
Despite the overall registration numbers being almost identical to the same month last year, there was still considerable variation among the different car brands. A lot of this movement was related to both the 2024 and 2025 ZEV mandate targets, as some brands pushed out extra EVs or closed off deliveries for non-EVs in order to hit this year’s 22% target, while other brands were already looking ahead to next year’s tougher 28% target and doing the opposite.
It was a good month to close out the year for Alpine, Bentley, BYD, Cupra, Fiat, Genesis, Jeep, Kia, Mazda, Mini, Peugeot, Porsche, Renault, Skoda, Tesla and Volvo. All of these brands overachieved against the overall market by at least 10% (so their registrations were up at least 9.8% on the same month last year).
Meanwhile, things didn’t finish off so well for Abarth, Audi, BMW, Citroën, Dacia, DS Automobiles, Ford, GWM Ora, Honda, Ineos, Jaguar, KGM, Land Rover, Lexus, Maserati, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, Polestar, SEAT, Smart, Subaru and Suzuki. All of these brands underachieved against the overall market by at least 10% (so their registrations were down at least 10.2% on the same month last year).
That means that the following brands were more or less where you’d expect them to be: Alfa Romeo, Hyundai, MG, Toyota, Vauxhall and Volkswagen.
As it has been all year, Volkswagen was comfortably the best-selling brand in December, with Tesla making its usual December appearance in second place ahead of BMW in third. Tesla was the biggest absolute improver, shifting 3,100 more cars than it did last December. The biggest loser was Audi, which registered 2,400 fewer cars than in the same month last year.
In total year sales, Volkswagen was again the nation’s favourite, ahead of BMW, Audi, Kia and Ford.
Tesla pulls usual December rabbit out of hat
For the fifth year in a row, a Tesla topped the best-seller charts in December. There’s clearly something about the company’s sales or logistics schedule that creates this pattern (and we’re just guessing, since the company doesn’t talk to most of the motoring media). So, just as it was last year and the year before that, the Tesla Model Y was the UK’s best-selling car in December – with the Model 3 in second place.
In total 2024 sales, the Ford Puma defended its crown as the country’s best-selling new car, holding off a late-year challenge from the Kia Sportage. A month ago, it looked like the Sportage was going to overhaul the Puma, especially with Ford’s ZEV mandate struggles, but in December it was the Kia’s sales that stalled.
The Puma made up almost 44% of all Ford registrations in 2024 – presumably, you can’t get hold of a Focus or Mustang for love or money at the moment…
We’ll have a fuller analysis of the full-year 2024 data in coming days.
