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Electric vehicle (EV) sales in the UK fell by 33.7 per cent in January and February, compared with the same two months last year, according to data from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT).

In January 2018, a mere 635 new EVs were registered in the UK – 37.1 per cent less than 1,010 that rolled off dealer forecourts in January 2017.

As for February 2018, 355 new EVs were sold across the country, representing a 26.5 per cent decrease from February 2017’s figure of 483 registrations.


...later in the same article...

The Department for Transport said that there have been over 130,000 claims for its plug-in car grant (£4,500 off EVs and £2,500 off PHEVs), with a spokesman stating that more than 11,500 public charging points had been installed, including 900 rapid chargers, making this the largest network in Europe.

Is the early (and relatively wealthy) adopters market now saturated?

Horse wrote:Is the early (and relatively wealthy) adopters market now saturated?

I imagine so. They are ridiculously expensive, and I imagine not everybody wants to shell out for the infrastructure to charge them at home, on top of the price of the car. The savings in BIK tax for company car drivers may be an incentive, but it's a non-tangible thing. For the normal motorist, the fuel savings may be juicy, but you still have to find the capital cost of the car.

I've driven - briefly a Leaf, but did a couple of days with an Ampera. Ok only mway, but it was comfy and smooth, and I'd happily have one (presumably representative of other hybrids) - but not at those prices. Plus cost of charging point at home.

Edited to correct smelcheck typos

Mr Cholmondeley-Warner wrote:

Horse wrote:Is the early (and relatively wealthy) adopters market now saturated?

I imagine so. They are ridiculously expensive, and I imagine not everybody wants to shell out for the infrastructure to charge them at home, on top of the price of the car. The savings in BIK tax for company car drivers may be an incentive, but it's a non-tangible thing. For the normal motorist, the fuel savings may be juicy, but you still have to find the capital cost of the car.

We will have a proliferation of better value electric cars on the market within the new 3 years and the market penetration will increase.

For me, they're going to need to be a *lot* cheaper before I could even consider dipping a toe in the water.

For one thing, I need a decent size car with a lot of boot space for work and so the current entry-level models wouldn't cut it, and that's before we consider the range. Whilst *most* of my regular driving is local, every few weeks I need to do a 200-300 mile round trip somewhere and if I'm visiting a client or something I can't be wasting time stopping off every 100 miles to sit around waiting for the car to charge up a bit.

The SMMT are not keen on EV’s for fairly obvious reasons, and I can offer a couple of reasons for the dip. These being the retooling of the Zoe production line and the pause in deliveries before the introduction of the new Nissan LEAF.

I suspect Tesla deliveries will also have been down as there was a surge in orders to beat the £40k+ car tax levy introduced last April.

2017 sales of ev's and plug in hybrids combined were very significantly up on the previous year.

DJP31 wrote:The SMMT are not keen on EV’s for fairly obvious reasons...

Perhaps I'm thick...

martine wrote:

DJP31 wrote:The SMMT are not keen on EV’s for fairly obvious reasons...

Perhaps I'm thick...

I doubt that

EV’s are generally not seen as being good news to the traditional ICE manufacturers who are heavily invested in their current business models. EV’s with lower running costs and far fewer moving parts that need replacing or repair don’t sit well with the dealer networks.

As a trade body it’s to be expected.