Registrations of electric cars in the UK continued to grow last month, despite a fall in the overall number of new cars hitting the road. According to new figures released by trade body the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, a total of 153,610 new cars were registered in the UK during November. This is a 1.9% reduction compared with the same month a year ago. Yet electric car registrations increased by 58.4% to 38,581 units.
Manufacturers face fines of £15,000 for every single combustion-engined car that they sell in breach of that ratio. It is likely that some car companies are also pre-registering electric cars in order to bolster their ‘sales’ numbers in a bid to comply with the mandate. Indeed, electric cars account for 18.7% of all the 1,811,992 new cars registered so far this year, which is some way short of the 22% target.