The private new car market showed poor form once again in April as new fleet sales grew year-on-year, culminating in a small overall new car market uptick of 1% last month.
In what is traditionally a low volume sales month after the registration heights caused by the nameplate change in March, the SMMT reports that around 50,000 new cars were registered to private customers in April. That’s a 18% drop when compared to April last year.
Comparatively, new fleet registrations grew by 19% last month, as the new car market continues to be driven primary by fleet sales. In total, just over 134,000 new cars were registered in the UK in April – a rather minor increase of around 1,000 models over the sales recorded in April 2023.
Private new car sales slump continues
Consumer new car sales have been sliding since about halfway through the last decade (peaked in 2015/2016), but the slowdown seems to be accelerating in recent months. It affects all types of new cars, and certainly not just EVs as certain national newspapers would love you to believe.
Unless anything radical changes (even more radical than a rout of the current government at the coming election), this trend is going to continue. New car prices are very high, and interest rates are higher than they’ve been for the last 15 years. Inflation on most consumer bills is squeezing household budgets, so buying a new car is getting harder for many people. Car finance terms are getting longer, so people are changing their cars less often. And so sales keep on falling.
Fleet sales are doing well, continuing their recovery from the depths of Covid. Whether this continues in the longer term remains to be seen.
EV uptake grows 11% in April
Following on from a rather disappointing 4% EV increase year-on-year in March, the electric car market grew by 11% in April when compared to the same month last year.
EV registrations totalled a few hundred under 23,000 last month, which increased the EV market share back up to 16% for 2024 as a whole. That said, the SMMT adds that only one in six of these new EVs went to private buyers, as demand for new private EVs fell by 22%.
As car manufacturers now offer a wide array of electric models and have to meet new EV mandate targets, the SMMT cites “the lack of government incentives for private motorists” as the main barrier that is curbing EV uptake, adding that tax incentives like temporarily halving VAT on new electric car purchases would accelerate the market’s shift towards electric power.
As the year progresses, we expect to see fiercer discounting on electric cars as car manufacturers scramble to hit their mandate targets and avoid large government fines. It’s a good bet that fleet customers, in particular, will be content to wait a bit longer where possible to get better deals before committing to large EV orders.
Good month, bad month
The overall market was up just 1% on last April, but there was significant variation between the manufacturers’ performances.
It was a strong month for Alpine, BMW, BYD, Dacia, GWM Ora, Jaguar, Jeep, Lexus, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, Renault, SEAT, Skoda, Smart, Subaru, Suzuki, Volkswagen and Volvo. All of these brands outperformed the overall market by at least 10%.
The news wasn’t so good for Abarth, Audi, Bentley, Dacia, DS Automobiles, Fiat, Ford, Honda, Maserati, Mazda, Mini, Peugeot, Polestar, Porsche, Tesla or Vauxhall, who were all at least 10% below the overall market – meaning they sold the same or fewer cars than last April.
That leaves Alfa Romeo, Citroen, Cupra, Genesis, Hyundai, Kia, Land Rover, MG, and Toyota who all pretty much held steady, being within plus or minus 10% of the overall new car market.
Renault and SEAT were the stand-out performers among the volume manufacturers, both increasing their sales by over 75% when compared to the same month last year. Going in the other direction, both Ford and Tesla dipped by over 20%.
Volkswagen continued to be the UK’s best-selling car brand in April, ahead of Audi, BMW, Ford and Kia.
Ford Puma back in the ascendancy
The popular Ford Puma crossover was the best-selling new model in April, as last month’s winner – the British-built Nissan Qashqai – dropped to fourth in the monthly rankings.
The best-selling new car in 2023, the Ford Puma is establishing itself as the car to beat once again in this year’s registrations race, and has built a sales lead of over 2,000 models four months into 2024.
The compact Volkswagen Polo finished April in second place – a surprising result as the small hatchback usually doesn’t make the top ten and has been regularly outsold by Volkswagen’s Golf and T-Roc models.
Capitalising on the retirement of the long-standing Mini hatch, the Audi A3 has continued to sell in consistent numbers – its third place finish in April enough to move the hatchback up to fourth in the annual leaderboard.
We’ll have our usual detailed look at the top ten in the coming days.
Further reporting by Stuart Masson
