Battery electric car sales spike

Tesla, Kia and BYD help boost segment’s performance after more than 2,000 sales across just four models.

Posted on 20 September, 2022

The popularity of battery electric vehicles (BEVs) spiked last month to account for more than half of all new EV sales and take their year-to-date market share of that category to one-third.

Registration figures from the Motor Industry Association show BEVs took out a 53.2 per cent chunk of the EV market in August, with petrol hybrids accounting for 33.8 per cent and plug-in petrol hybrids (PHEVs) 13 per cent.

It marked a dramatic shift from July when BEVs only made up 18.6 per cent of EV sales, behind PHEVs on 21.5 per cent and traditional hybrids on 59.9 per cent.

The boost in August was helped by mass deliveries of Tesla’s Model 3, pictured, with 745 sales completed compared with only three in the previous four months. The marque’s Model Y also had 581 registrations after nine in June and none during the rest of 2022.

BYD’s Atto 3, a relative newcomer to the market, had 448 registrations after 20 in July, and the Kia EV6 jumped from double-figure sales in recent months to 309 in August.

Last month’s figures had echoes of March when a similar sharp increase for fully electric models meant zero-emissions vehicles dominated 65.4 per cent of EV trade.

The latest statistics meant BEVs made up 33.3 per cent of sales for vehicles with some form of electrification over the first eight months of 2022. For hybrids the total was 45.6 per cent and PHEVs had 21.1 per cent.

In the new-vehicle market overall, BEVs had a record month in August and accounted for 17.4 per cent of all sales to take their year-to-date total to 7.2 per cent.

Hybrids scored 11.1 per cent last month and 9.9 per cent for the year so far, while PHEVs recorded 4.3 per cent and 4.6 per cent, respectively.

The monthly market share for petrol vehicles was the second lowest of 2022 in August at 37 per cent, down from 42.8 per cent in July, and now sits at 42.5 per cent year to date.

Diesel registrations remained steady at 30.2 per cent last month compared with 30.5 per cent in July. For the year so far, such models have accounted for 35.7 per cent of registrations.