Why are fewer people buying electric cars?

The rebellion of 26 Conservative MPs against the government’s zero electric vehicle (ZEV) mandate couldn’t have come at a worse time for the Prime Minister. The ZEV will compel manufacturers to ensure that, from 1 January,  at least 22 per cent of their car sales are pure electric. Yet simultaneously comes news of a collapse in sales of electric cars.  

There is little other interpretation to put on the figures for new car sales in November put out by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) today. Electric cars have had an appalling month, with sales down 17.1 per cent on November last year. This, in a month when overall cars sales were 9.5 per cent higher than a year earlier. Motorists seems to be abandoning pure electric cars, although they are buying hybrids. Sales of mild hybrids were up 30.1 per cent over the year and those of plug-in hybrids 55.8 per cent. Sales of petrol cars were also up over the year, by 7.4 per cent, taking a market share of 39.5 per cent.

 True, electric cars had a particularly good November last year, when they accounted for 20.6 per cent of all sales. This November that was down to a 15.6 per cent market share. Looking over the past couple of years, electric car sales have stalled at around one sixth of the market. This really matters to the motor industry because from January manufacturers will be on a mandate to make sure that at least 22 per cent of their output is pure electric cars, a proportion that will rise steadily to 80 per cent by 2030. These targets were not touched by Rishi Sunak when he relaxed the 2030 ban on petrol cars back in September. Manufacturers face having to pay fines for every vehicle that they fall short, of around £15,000 per car, although their exact level has yet to be confirmed. In reality, the position is grimmer than it looks for many manufacturers because the overall market share figure of 15.6 per cent includes some car-makers like Tesla who are 100 per cent electric.

How will manufacturers respond? Unless they can find some way of shifting their electric cars it is hard to see how some of them will be able to continue in the UK market. Some may do as Ford has already done and pull popular petrol models like the Fiesta in order to get their proportion of electric vehicles up. The fines which the government has proposed for failing to reach the targets are flat-rate, meaning that it will make no sense to sell cheap petrol cars in Britain. Some niche manufacturers making very high value petrol cars, on the other hand, might well conclude that their customers could stand the pain of a £15,000 levy. What few petrol cars will be left on the market in 2030 won’t be small runabouts – they will be supercars. For the ordinary motorist there will be a lot less choice.   Relatively cheap Chinese-made electric cars look like snatching a lot of the mass market.

Interestingly, the fall in sales of electric cars has occurred against a backdrop of a recharging network which, according to the government, has grown by 43 per cent over the past year. That ought to have gone some way to answering complaints about the difficulty of charging the vehicles. But for some reason – either purchase price or the impracticalities of charging – private motorists are showing little interest. It is buying public, as much as the cars themselves, which seems in need of a recharge.