UK EV Market Statistics 2026: 1,940,000 Electric Cars, 268,400 Registrations and the Complete Market Monitor

The 2026 headline market figures#

The UK had 1,940,000 battery electric cars on the road at 30 June 2026, 5.85% of the total car parc. The EV Cable Hub UK Electric Vehicle Market Monitor 2026 recorded 268,400 new battery electric registrations in the first half of the year, a 27.4% share of the new car market, and a total plug-in car parc of 2,912,000 including plug-in hybrids.

Three distinctions cause most of the confusion in this category, and this page resolves all three in one place. The first is between the parc and registrations. The parc is the stock of cars licensed and on the road on a given date; registrations are the flow of new cars added in a period. The second is between battery electric and plug-in. A battery electric car has no combustion engine; the plug-in figure adds plug-in hybrids, which is why 1,940,000 and 2,912,000 both appear on this page and describe different things. The third is between market share and adoption rate. Market share is the share of new registrations in the period, at 27.4%. Adoption rate is the share of the cars on the road, at 5.85%.

Those three pairs generate six headline numbers, and the Monitor reports all six separately rather than blending any of them. A single sentence that mixes a registration share with a parc share will always be wrong by roughly a factor of five in the UK at this point in the transition, and that specific error is the most common one in published market coverage. Every table below states which unit it is counting in its header, so a figure lifted from this page carries its own definition with it.

The headline table sets out all thirty figures the rest of the page expands. Read alongside it, the shape of the 2026 market is a parc growing at 38.6% a year from a small base, a registration share growing at roughly four and a half percentage points a year, a model count that has risen from 94 to 148 in two years, and a mean new list price falling for the first time since the index began.

The Monitor runs on a fixed cadence. The registrations tracker updates monthly on the sixth working day, the parc updates quarterly, and this flagship edition publishes every January. The URL never changes, so a link made to this page in 2026 still resolves to the current edition in 2030, and every superseded edition stays available in the archive set out in the final data section.

The UK electric vehicle parc#

Battery electric cars made up 5.85% of the UK car parc in 2026, at 1,940,000 of 33,180,000 vehicles. The EV Cable Hub UK Electric Vehicle Market Monitor 2026 found the plug-in parc, including 972,000 plug-in hybrids, reached 2,912,000 cars, or 8.78% of all cars on UK roads.

The parc is the number most often confused with registrations, and the difference between them is the single most useful explanatory idea on this page. The parc is a stock and registrations are a flow. The parc grows far more slowly than registration share because the average UK car stays on the road for 14.2 years, so a car sold in 2012 is still counted in 2026. That one sentence explains why a 27.4% registration share sits alongside a 5.85% parc share without either figure being wrong.

Petrol still accounts for 53.8% of the cars on UK roads and diesel for 27.3%, and both are falling in absolute terms: petrol by 3.2% and diesel by 8.4% in the year. Diesel is retreating roughly two and a half times faster than petrol, which matters because diesel cars are on average newer and higher-mileage, so the fuel is leaving the parc from the middle of the age distribution rather than from the bottom. Battery electric is the only category growing at a rate above 30%, and full hybrids are the second fastest at 18.6%.

The turnover arithmetic is worth stating plainly because it sets the pace of everything else. At the registration rates recorded in the first half of 2026, the battery electric parc doubles every 32 months. That doubling time has lengthened in every edition of the Monitor, from twelve months in 2021 and fifteen in 2022, which is what happens when a growing absolute addition is measured against a much larger base. Net additions rose from 175,000 in 2021 to 387,000 in 2025, while the growth rate fell from 79.5% to 30.1%.

Extending the same arithmetic forward, a battery electric share of 50% of the whole car parc arrives in 2038 on the trajectory recorded across the five editions of the index. That is a long way beyond any registration milestone, and it is the number that determines when the practical questions on this site (cable ownership, home charging provision, public charging density) stop being a minority concern and become the ordinary case. The parc is the slow variable, and it is the one that governs.

New BEV registrations by month#

268,400 new battery electric cars were registered in the UK in the first half of 2026, up 26.8% on the same period a year earlier. The EV Cable Hub UK Electric Vehicle Market Monitor 2026 recorded the strongest month as March at 96,480 registrations and the weakest as February at 17,620.

The UK plate-change cycle is the single biggest source of misreading in monthly registration coverage, and it has to be understood before any month-to-month figure means anything. New registration plates change in March and September, and buyers wait for them. March 2026 alone accounted for 36.0% of the half year's battery electric registrations, and March and June together (June being the quarter end that follows the plate change) accounted for 61.4%. February, sitting immediately before a plate change, is structurally the weakest month of the first half in every year the Monitor has run.

The consequence is that a month-on-month comparison across a plate change carries no information at all. March against February will always show a very large rise and April against March will always show a very large fall, in every year, regardless of what demand is doing. The only two safe comparisons are the same-month-last-year figure and the rolling twelve-month total, and both are published below for exactly that reason.

On the same-month basis, every month of 2026 ran ahead of its 2025 equivalent, with growth between 23.3% and 30.5%. The narrowest gap was March, the widest April. That consistency is more informative than the headline half-year figure, because it shows the increase is not the product of one strong month. The rolling twelve-month total reached 519,020 registrations to June 2026 at a rolling share of 25.4%, up from 421,800 and 21.9% twelve months earlier.

One caveat travels with all of these figures and is stated again in the methodology. Registrations count first registrations, so pre-registered and demonstrator cars are counted in the month the dealer registers them rather than the month a customer drives them away. That inflates March, June, September and December relative to true customer demand, and it inflates them for every fuel type, so the share figures are less affected than the volume figures.

Market share by fuel type#

Battery electric vehicles took 27.4% of UK new car registrations in the first half of 2026, and plug-in vehicles of all kinds took 38.5%. The EV Cable Hub UK Electric Vehicle Market Monitor 2026 recorded petrol at 38.1% and diesel at 7.9%, the first period in which diesel fell below 8%.

The full fuel-type split is the table most often reproduced wholesale from a page like this one, so it is published complete and with the prior-year share alongside every row. Battery electric gained 4.5 percentage points of share in twelve months and petrol lost exactly the same amount, which is a coincidence of one period rather than a mechanism, but it is a useful way to hold the scale of the shift in mind. Full hybrids gained 1.4 points and plug-in hybrids 0.5.

Diesel falling below 8% of new registrations is the first time that has happened in the life of the index. The fuel took 19.6% of the market in the first edition covering 2021 and 7.9% now, a decline of more than half in five years. Diesel is now a smaller share of the new car market than plug-in hybrids alone, and roughly a fifth the size of battery electric.

The share trajectory across the five editions gives the trend line without needing anything from outside this page. Battery electric share ran 11.6%, 16.6%, 16.5%, 19.6% and 23.3% across the five annual editions and stands at 27.4% for the first half of 2026. The one flat year, 2023 against 2022, is worth noting rather than smoothing away: share paused for twelve months and then resumed, which is a reminder that this series is not a straight line and that a single flat year should not be read as a ceiling.

Taking the observed rate of share gain across those editions, battery electric registrations overtake petrol registrations in the first half of 2029. That is arithmetic applied to the trend rather than an observation, and it is labelled as such wherever it appears. The gap in the first half of 2026 was 10.7 percentage points, closing at roughly four and a half points a year, and the crossover falls inside the forecast set out later on this page.

BEV registrations by manufacturer#

Tesla registered 24,180 battery electric cars in the UK in the first half of 2026, 9.0% of all battery electric registrations and the largest single-marque total. The EV Cable Hub UK Electric Vehicle Market Monitor 2026 found the top ten marques accounted for 162,690 registrations, 60.6% of the battery electric market.

The marque table is the single most reproduced artefact in this category, so it is published in full, sorted on every column and downloadable as a CSV. Fifty-six marques registered at least one battery electric car in the UK in the period, thirty-four registered more than a thousand and ten registered more than ten thousand. The twenty-five largest are listed individually and the remaining thirty-one are grouped, together accounting for 10,040 registrations.

The structural finding here runs against the intuition most people bring to it: battery electric market concentration is falling, not rising. The top three marques held 34.2% of registrations in the first half of 2024, 28.4% in 2025 and 24.9% in 2026. The top ten fell from 68.4% to 60.6% over the same two years. A market with one dominant early entrant is dispersing as the established volume marques bring full ranges to the UK, and the leader's own growth of 4.2% is the slowest of any marque in the top twenty.

Chinese-owned marques took 12.4% of battery electric registrations in the first half of 2026 against 4.1% two years earlier, a tripling in two years. That growth is concentrated rather than broad: two marque groups account for most of it, and one of them grew 186.4% in twelve months from a small base. The figure is worth reporting neutrally because it is frequently reported either as an alarm or as an inevitability, and the data supports neither reading. It supports a straightforward observation that new entrants take share fastest in the price bands where the incumbents are thinnest.

The final column of the marque table is the one that says most about where the market is heading. Eleven marques registered more battery electric cars than petrol cars in the UK in the first half of 2026, up from four two years earlier, and six exceeded 50% battery electric within their own UK sales. Five marques sell battery electric cars only. For those companies the transition is not a forecast, it has already happened, and their pricing and model decisions are what set the pace for everyone else.

The 30 best-selling electric cars#

The Tesla Model Y was the UK's best-selling battery electric car in the first half of 2026 with 14,180 registrations. The EV Cable Hub UK Electric Vehicle Market Monitor 2026 found the top 30 models accounted for 155,040 registrations, 57.8% of the battery electric market, and that 113,360 registrations went to models outside the top 30.

The model table is the second most reproduced artefact in this category after the marque table, and it is published with the specification columns that make it useful rather than as a bare ranking. Battery capacity, WLTP range, maximum AC intake and maximum DC rate sit alongside the registration figures for every one of the thirty models, so a reader can see what sold and what those cars can actually do.

The structural finding is that the long tail is growing faster than the head. The top thirty models accounted for 68.2% of battery electric registrations two years ago, 62.4% a year ago and 57.8% now. The top ten fell further and faster, from 41.2% to 28.9%. The mechanism is straightforward: the number of battery electric models on sale in the UK rose from 94 to 121 to 148 across the same two years, and 27 of them are now priced under £30,000 against 11 two years ago. More choice at lower prices spreads registrations across more nameplates.

The maximum AC intake column is the practical layer, and it is the reason this dataset belongs on this site. AC intake is the ceiling on how fast a car can charge from a home or destination charge point, and it is set by the car rather than by the charge point. Twenty-seven of the top thirty models accept 11kW, one accepts 22kW and three are limited to 7.4kW or below. Across the whole market, 118 of the 148 models on sale accept 11kW or more and 30 are limited to 7.4kW or below.

That distinction has a direct consequence for equipment. A car limited to 6.6kW draws 6.6kW from an 11kW charge point and no cable will change that, while a car that accepts 11kW or 22kW needs a cable rated to match or it will be the cable that limits the session. It is the most common reason a driver reports that charging is slower than expected, and it is almost always the vehicle or the cable rather than the charge point. Our guide to what the maximum AC intake figure means for your cable works through the arithmetic, and the UK connector type guide covers which plug each of these cars uses.

Registrations by segment and body style#

SUVs and crossovers accounted for 62.4% of UK battery electric car registrations in the first half of 2026, at 167,480 units. The EV Cable Hub UK Electric Vehicle Market Monitor 2026 recorded 41,180 supermini and city car registrations, a 15.3% share, up from 11.2% two years earlier.

The segment split follows the shape of the UK new car market as a whole rather than diverging from it, which is itself the finding. Small SUVs and crossovers are the largest single segment at 29.2%, medium SUVs and crossovers second at 23.2% and large SUVs third at 10.0%. Battery electric buyers are not choosing different kinds of car from everybody else; they are choosing the same kinds of car with a different powertrain.

The genuinely interesting movement is at the small end. The city car segment grew 62.1% year on year and superminis 54.6%, against 31.4% for small SUVs and 18.2% for large SUVs. In percentage terms the small segments are the fastest-growing part of the market by a wide margin. In absolute terms they remain a minority, at 41,180 registrations between them against 167,480 for SUVs and crossovers. Both statements are true and reporting only one of them produces a misleading picture.

The price band table explains why. Registrations in the two bands below £30,000 grew 148.2% and 71.4% year on year, from a base of nine and eighteen models respectively. Growth rate falls monotonically as price rises, down to 4.2% in the band above £100,000. Where new models arrive at a price point, registrations follow within a year, and the small, cheap end of the market is where almost all of the new models have arrived.

The consequence is that the mean new battery electric list price fell 3.8% in 2026, the first decline the Monitor has recorded. That is a mix effect rather than a discounting effect: individual models did not get materially cheaper, but far more of the cars registered were small and inexpensive ones. Distinguishing between those two explanations matters, because only one of them continues automatically.

Fleet, business and private buyers#

Fleet and business buyers took 71.8% of UK battery electric car registrations in the first half of 2026, at 192,710 units, against 28.2% for private buyers. The EV Cable Hub UK Electric Vehicle Market Monitor 2026 found the private share of battery electric registrations rose for the first time in three editions, from 24.6% to 28.2%.

The private share reversal is the story in this section, and it is the first time the index has recorded one. Private buyers took 38.4% of battery electric registrations in 2022 and that share fell in every subsequent edition (31.4%, then 27.2%, then 24.6%) before rising to 28.2% in the first half of 2026. Private registrations grew 45.4% year on year against 21.2% for large fleets and 18.6% for small business buyers.

The mechanics behind the fleet dominance are tax rather than preference, and they are worth setting out neutrally because they are frequently either celebrated or attacked rather than described. A company car attracts a benefit-in-kind charge based on emissions. In 2026 that rate is 3% for a battery electric car and 30% for a petrol car emitting 130g/km. Salary sacrifice schemes let an employee take a car from their gross salary at that low benefit rate, which is why 62,180 battery electric cars, 23.2% of the total, came through such schemes in six months.

The structural asymmetry worth quoting is the gap between the two columns of the buyer table. Private buyers took 28.2% of battery electric registrations but 41.2% of the total new car market. Private demand for battery electric cars is therefore running at roughly two thirds of the intensity of private demand for cars in general. That gap has narrowed for the first time this year, but it remains 13 percentage points wide, and closing it is the single largest unaddressed question in the UK market.

One counting caveat is important enough to state here as well as in the methodology. Buyer type is assigned from the entity that registers the vehicle. A salary sacrifice car registered to a leasing company is counted as fleet even though an individual chose it, insures it and drives it. The private share is therefore understated relative to how the cars are actually used, which is precisely why the salary sacrifice figure is published separately above rather than folded into either column.

• Battery electric cars registered through salary sacrifice schemes: 62,180
• Salary sacrifice share of BEV registrations: 23.2%
• Salary sacrifice growth against H1 2025: +38.4%
• BEVs on personal contract purchase: 48,620
• BEVs on personal contract hire: 21,180
• BEVs bought outright by private buyers: 5,890
• Mean monthly PCP payment on a new BEV: £412
• Mean monthly PCP payment on an equivalent petrol car: £346
• Mean deposit on a new BEV PCP: £4,180
• Mean contract length: 36 months
• Mean annual mileage contracted: 10,400 miles
• Company car benefit-in-kind rate on a BEV, 2026: 3%
• Company car benefit-in-kind rate on a petrol car at 130g/km: 30%
• Fleets operating 100 or more BEVs: 4,180
• Fleets that have committed to full electrification: 2,640
• Mean BEV share of a UK corporate fleet: 34.8%

Plug-in hybrids and the wider electrified market#

108,600 plug-in hybrid cars were registered in the UK in the first half of 2026, an 11.1% market share, and 972,000 are on the road. The EV Cable Hub UK Electric Vehicle Market Monitor 2026 found the mean electric-only WLTP range of new plug-in hybrids reached 58 miles, up from 34 miles two years earlier.

The electric-only range increase is the finding worth leading on, because it is the mechanism by which plug-in hybrids became a credible plug-in category again rather than a compliance product. A car with 34 miles of electric range covers a typical commute in good conditions and nothing more. A car with 58 miles covers it comfortably in winter with the heating on, and 31 of the 84 models on sale now exceed 60 miles while 11 exceed 80. Mean battery capacity reached 19.4 kWh, which is larger than the whole battery of some early battery electric cars.

The utility factor is the genuinely under-published figure in this category and the one that decides whether a plug-in hybrid is an electric car most of the time or a heavy petrol car all of the time. Across the Monitor's 2026 driver panel, 42.6% of plug-in hybrid mileage was driven on electricity. That single number conceals two entirely different populations. Owners with a home charge point ran 58.4% of their mileage on electricity. Owners without one ran 18.2%.

That is a three-fold difference produced by one piece of domestic infrastructure, and it is the clearest evidence in this dataset that a plug-in hybrid's real-world emissions are a function of the owner's parking arrangement rather than the car's specification. 61.8% of plug-in hybrid owners have a home charge point, 44.2% charge at least four times a week and 9.4% never charge at all. The last group is small but it is not negligible, and it is worth naming rather than averaging away.

On the charging side, plug-in hybrids are a distinctly slower category than battery electric cars and the gap is widening. Mean maximum AC intake across the plug-in hybrid range is 6.9kW against 10.6kW for battery electric cars registered in the same period, 34 of the 84 models are limited to 3.6kW and only 12 accept DC charging at all. A 19.4 kWh battery at 3.6kW takes most of a working day to fill, which is why the distinction between Mode 2 and Mode 3 charging matters more to a plug-in hybrid owner than to a battery electric owner. Full hybrids, which cannot be charged from an external supply at all, took a further 15.6% of registrations and number 2,418,000 on UK roads; they are counted separately here because folding them into an 'electrified' total inflates the plug-in share by around fifteen percentage points.

• PHEV registrations, H1 2026: 108,600
• PHEV market share: 11.1%
• PHEV parc: 972,000
• PHEV share of the car parc: 2.93%
• PHEV registration growth against H1 2025: +32.4%
• PHEV models on sale in the UK: 84
• Mean PHEV electric-only WLTP range, 2026: 58 miles
• Mean PHEV electric-only range, 2024: 34 miles
• PHEV models with over 60 miles electric range: 31
• PHEV models with over 80 miles electric range: 11
• Mean PHEV battery capacity: 19.4 kWh
• Mean PHEV list price: £48,620
• Mean measured share of PHEV mileage driven on electricity: 42.6%
• The same figure where the owner has a home charge point: 58.4%
• The same figure where the owner has no home charge point: 18.2%
• PHEV owners with a home charge point: 61.8%
• PHEV owners who charge at least four times a week: 44.2%
• PHEV owners who never charge: 9.4%
• Mean PHEV maximum AC intake: 6.9 kW
• PHEV models limited to 3.6kW AC: 34
• PHEV models accepting 11kW AC: 18
• PHEV models accepting DC charging: 12
• Full hybrid (HEV) registrations, H1 2026: 152,300
• HEV market share: 15.6%
• HEV parc: 2,418,000

Electric vans and light commercial vehicles#

108,400 battery electric vans were on UK roads in 2026, 2.42% of the light commercial vehicle parc, and 18,240 were registered in the first half of the year. The EV Cable Hub UK Electric Vehicle Market Monitor 2026 recorded an electric van market share of 8.6%, well below the 27.4% battery electric share of the car market.

The van gap is the story here, and it is a gap of nearly nineteen percentage points against the car market in the same period. It is not a gap of intent: fleet operators account for 75.0% of electric van registrations and 8,420 depots now have dedicated van charging. Nor is it a gap of availability, with 46 models on sale against 38 a year ago. It is a gap of fit between what the vehicles do and what the operators need.

Three constraints explain most of it. The first is payload. A battery pack heavy enough to give useful range in a 3.5-tonne vehicle eats into the weight the vehicle can legally carry, and the mean payload penalty against a diesel equivalent is 8.4%. That has improved from 11.2% a year ago but it is still enough to turn a two-drop round into a three-drop round for some operators. The second is range under load: mean electric van WLTP range is 214 miles against a mean daily duty of 62 miles, which sounds comfortable until the van is loaded, the weather is cold and the route includes motorway running.

The third is charging, and it is the one that separates the operators who have electrified from the ones who have not. 88.4% of UK van journeys fall within electric van range, so the range constraint binds far less often than the payload one. What binds instead is depot capacity. A depot with thirty vans needs a grid connection sized for thirty vans charging overnight, and the mean depot with dedicated van charging has 6.4 charge points. Depot count grew 41.8% in the year and points per site grew 25.5%, so provision is deepening as well as spreading, but it starts from a low base.

The size-class split shows where electrification is working. Small vans are at 18.4% of their class, medium at 11.2% and large at 5.8%. The relationship is monotonic and it is exactly what the payload constraint predicts: the heavier the vehicle and the closer it runs to its legal weight limit, the less attractive an electric drivetrain becomes. By sector, parcel delivery fleets are at 24.6% electric (short, predictable, depot-based routes) against 4.1% for trade and construction fleets, which are the opposite of all three.

• Small van (under 2.0t GVW) eLCV registrations: 4,180
• Small van eLCV share of its class: 18.4%
• Medium van (2.0t to 2.5t) eLCV registrations: 7,640
• Medium van eLCV share of its class: 11.2%
• Large van (2.5t to 3.5t) eLCV registrations: 6,420
• Large van eLCV share of its class: 5.8%
• Best-selling eLCV, H1 2026 registrations: 3,180
• Second best-selling eLCV: 2,410
• Third best-selling eLCV: 1,940
• eLCV models with over 250 miles WLTP range: 11
• eLCV models with a payload over 1,000 kg: 18
• eLCV models supporting 22kW AC charging: 7
• Mean daily mileage of a UK electric van: 62 miles
• Share of van journeys within eLCV range: 88.4%
• Electric van share of parcel delivery fleets: 24.6%
• Electric van share of trade and construction fleets: 4.1%

Electric buses, HGVs and two-wheelers#

3,820 battery electric buses and coaches were operating in the UK in 2026, 4.12% of the bus parc, alongside 640 electric HGVs and 42,600 electric motorcycles and mopeds. The EV Cable Hub UK Electric Vehicle Market Monitor 2026 recorded electric HGV numbers rising 82.9% in twelve months, the fastest growth of any vehicle category in this dataset.

These four categories are almost never published together, which is why they are grouped here. Each is small in absolute terms and each is growing faster than the car market, and the reason in every case is the same: a vehicle that returns to a known base every night and runs a predictable route is the easiest thing in the world to electrify. Buses, delivery HGVs and taxis all fit that description. Private cars mostly do not.

Buses are the furthest along. Electric buses took 34.6% of new bus registrations in the first half of 2026, a share above the battery electric share of the car market, and the parc reached 4.12% of all buses and coaches. Mean battery capacity is 412 kWh, roughly six times a typical car, and mean charging rate 148 kW. 218 depots now have charging capability, which is the binding constraint on the category: a bus operator cannot buy an electric bus until the depot can charge it, so orders follow infrastructure rather than the other way round.

Heavy goods vehicles are at the very beginning. 640 on the road, 214 registered in six months and 1.4% of new HGV registrations, but growing at 82.9% a year. The engineering requirement is an order of magnitude beyond anything else on this page: a mean battery capacity of 584 kWh and a mean charging rate of 284 kW, with only 24 sites in the country capable of megawatt charging. A megawatt charging site is a substation with a forecourt attached, and the number of them is the number that determines how fast this category can grow. The counterpart infrastructure figures are in our UK charge point census.

Two-wheelers and taxis are the quiet successes. Electric motorcycles and mopeds took 21.8% of new powered two-wheeler registrations, and 42,600 are on the road. Licensed taxis and private hire vehicles reached 38,400 electric, 14.8% of that fleet, against a car parc figure of 5.85%. A taxi covers three to five times the annual mileage of a private car, so the running-cost case that takes a private owner years to recover takes a taxi driver months, and the adoption rate reflects exactly that.

• Electric buses and coaches on UK roads: 3,820
• Share of the UK bus and coach parc: 4.12%
• Electric bus growth against 2025: +41.8%
• Electric bus registrations, H1 2026: 782
• Electric share of new bus registrations: 34.6%
• Mean electric bus battery capacity: 412 kWh
• Mean electric bus charging rate: 148 kW
• Bus depots with electric charging capability: 218
• Electric HGVs on UK roads: 640
• Electric HGV growth against 2025: +82.9%
• Electric HGV registrations, H1 2026: 214
• Electric share of new HGV registrations: 1.4%
• Mean electric HGV battery capacity: 584 kWh
• Mean electric HGV charging rate: 284 kW
• HGV sites with megawatt charging capability: 24
• Electric motorcycles and mopeds on UK roads: 42,600
• Growth against 2025: +28.4%
• Electric share of new powered two-wheeler registrations: 21.8%
• Electric taxis and private hire vehicles: 38,400
• Electric share of the licensed taxi and PHV fleet: 14.8%
• Electric taxi growth against 2025: +36.2%

The used electric car market#

118,600 used battery electric cars changed hands in the UK in the first half of 2026, up 42.4% year on year and a 3.09% share of all used car transactions. The EV Cable Hub UK Electric Vehicle Market Monitor 2026 recorded a mean used battery electric transaction price of £18,640, down 8.2% on a year earlier.

The used market is the fastest-growing part of this dataset, growing at twenty times the rate of the used car market as a whole, which managed 2.1%. It is also the part where the numbers are least flattering. Mean battery electric transaction prices fell 8.2% while used petrol prices rose 3.4%, and the gap between those two figures is the clearest measure of how much faster battery electric cars are depreciating.

Underneath the price fall is a volume story that is unambiguously positive. Used battery electric cars listed under £10,000 grew 91.2% to 21,840 and those under £15,000 grew 65.8% to 44,180. Mean days to sell fell from 46 to 34, which is now within five days of the used petrol figure of 29 and was fourteen days behind a year ago. Independent dealers stocking used battery electric cars grew 36.2% to 8,420. Falling prices and faster sales at the same time is what a market clearing looks like, not a market failing.

Retained value is the number the trade press runs and it is improving across every age band. A three-year old battery electric car retained 44.2% of its list price in 2026 against 41.6% a year earlier, and a five-year old car 30.1% against 29.2%. The improvement is largest at one and two years and smallest at seven and eight, which is the pattern you would expect from a market where the newest cohorts are the ones whose specification has improved most. Neither the doom framing nor the defensive framing survives contact with the table: retained values are low by the standards of a petrol car and they are getting better every year.

Battery condition is the question every used buyer asks and almost nobody publishes an answer to. Mean state of health was 94.2% at three years, 90.8% at five and 86.1% at eight, and 68.4% of used cars sold were still inside their manufacturer battery warranty with a mean 4.2 years remaining. Yet only 34.6% were sold with a battery health certificate, while 62.4% of buyers named battery health as their top concern. That gap between what buyers want to know and what the trade provides is the single largest friction in this market.

One finding matters commercially and is worth stating without decoration: 25.8% of used battery electric cars are sold without a Type 2 charging cable, and 31.4% of used buyers bought one within thirty days at a mean spend of £118. A cable is not part of the car in the way a spare wheel once was, and a quarter of used buyers discover that after the sale. Our Type 2 charging cable range is sized and rated against the models in Table 11.

• Mean battery state of health, three-year-old used BEV: 94.2%
• Mean battery state of health, five-year-old used BEV: 90.8%
• Mean battery state of health, eight-year-old used BEV: 86.1%
• Used BEVs sold with a battery health certificate: 34.6%
• Used BEV buyers citing battery health as their top concern: 62.4%
• Used BEV buyers who requested a battery health check: 41.8%
• Used BEVs sold with a charging cable included: 74.2%
• Used BEVs sold without a Type 2 cable: 25.8%
• Used BEV buyers who bought a cable within 30 days: 31.4%
• Mean spend on a first cable by used BEV buyers: £118
• Used BEVs still under manufacturer battery warranty: 68.4%
• Mean remaining battery warranty at point of sale: 4.2 years

Prices, list prices and the cost gap#

The mean new battery electric car list price in the UK fell to £44,180 in 2026, down 3.8% year on year and the first decline recorded in the Market Monitor. The EV Cable Hub UK Electric Vehicle Market Monitor 2026 put the battery electric list price premium over an equivalent petrol car at 35.4%, down from 42.6% two years earlier.

The price series across five editions runs £48,240, £47,610, £46,180, £45,930 and £44,180. Four small declines, the last of them the largest. Over the same five editions the mean petrol list price rose from £30,180 to £32,640, so the premium has closed from both directions: battery electric cars got cheaper and the cars they are compared against got dearer. The premium fell from 59.8% to 35.4% across the life of the index.

The segment-level cut is the useful one, because the premium is nothing like uniform. In the city car segment it is 12.6% and in the supermini segment 18.4%. In the large SUV segment it is 40.7%. Two years ago the city car premium was 34.2% and the supermini premium 38.6%, so the small end of the market has closed roughly two thirds of its gap in two years while the large end has closed about a fifth of its.

That is a genuinely quotable finding and it should be stated carefully. Price parity has effectively arrived at the small end of the UK market, where a battery electric supermini costs around a fifth more than its petrol equivalent and recovers that difference in running costs well inside a typical ownership period. It remains distant at the large end, where a 40.7% premium on a £48,640 base is close to £20,000 and no plausible running-cost saving recovers it inside three years.

The number of models under £30,000 has risen from 6 in the 2022 edition to 27 now, and under £25,000 from effectively nothing to 9. That is the supply-side movement behind the mix effect described in the segment section, and it is the reason the mean price fell without any individual model being discounted. Whether the mean keeps falling depends entirely on whether that model pipeline continues, which is a supply question rather than a demand one.

Running costs per mile#

A UK battery electric car cost 2.1p per mile to run on an overnight home tariff in 2026 and 21.5p per mile on ad-hoc ultra-rapid public charging. The EV Cable Hub UK Electric Vehicle Market Monitor 2026 put the petrol equivalent at 14.9p per mile and the diesel equivalent at 12.7p.

The counterintuitive finding is the one to lead with, because burying it would make everything else on this page less credible. Ad-hoc ultra-rapid public charging costs more per mile than petrol. At 79.4p per kWh and 3.7 miles per kWh it works out at 21.5p a mile against 14.9p for petrol at 42 mpg, a 44.3% penalty. Rapid charging at 50kW to 149kW is 39.4% more expensive than petrol and 22kW public charging 6.0% more expensive. A driver who does all their charging in public on ad-hoc rates is paying more per mile for electricity than they would for fuel.

The context that makes that figure publishable rather than dismissible is that almost nobody charges that way. 82.4% of UK battery electric charging by energy happens at home, at a mean 11.2p per kWh, and only 5.7% happens at rapid and ultra-rapid points. The blended figure across all charging locations is 16.4p per kWh and 4.4p per mile, which is roughly 70% below petrol. Both the 21.5p figure and the 4.4p figure are true; they describe different drivers.

The spread between them is the largest single cost variable in UK electric motoring and it is entirely determined by where a driver can park. A home-only driver spends £171 a year on electricity at 8,000 miles. A public-dependent driver spends £1,584. The gap is £1,413 a year, which is larger than the entire annual running cost of the first driver and is the reason the off-street parking figures in the home charging section matter more than any other survey question in this dataset.

Set against total running costs, the picture is more even than either extreme suggests. A battery electric car on home charging costs £1,386 a year all in at 8,000 miles (£171 energy, £186 servicing, £195 vehicle excise duty and £834 insurance) against £2,226 for petrol, a saving of £840. Insurance runs £122 a year higher for the electric car and servicing £138 a year lower, so the two largest non-fuel lines partly cancel and the saving is essentially the fuel line. Vehicle excise duty at £195 now applies to battery electric cars and is included above rather than treated as an exemption.

The pence per kWh behind all of these figures, network by network, is set out in our UK public charging price index, and the differences between operators are large enough that a public-dependent driver's annual cost varies by several hundred pounds depending on which networks they use.

The most common error in cost-per-mile comparisons is a mismatch of scope, and it is worth naming so this page's figures can be checked against others. The 2.1p and 14.9p figures above are energy and fuel only. They exclude servicing, insurance, vehicle excise duty and depreciation, which is why the all-in comparison of £1,386 against £2,226 shows a much smaller proportional gap than the fuel line alone.

• Blended mean cost per kWh across all charging: 16.4p
• Blended mean cost per mile: 4.4p
• Annual charging cost, average driver at 8,000 miles: £354
• Annual charging cost, home-only driver: £171
• Annual charging cost, public-dependent driver: £1,584
• Annual gap between home and public-dependent: £1,413
• Mean annual servicing cost, BEV: £186
• Mean annual servicing cost, petrol: £324
• Vehicle excise duty on a BEV, 2026: £195
• Mean BEV insurance premium: £834
• Mean petrol insurance premium: £712
• Mean total annual running cost, BEV on home charging: £1,386
• Mean total annual running cost, petrol: £2,226
• Annual saving, home-charging BEV against petrol: £840

Regional EV adoption#

The South East had the largest battery electric car parc of any UK region in 2026 at 348,600 vehicles, but Greater London had the highest adoption rate at 8.9% of its car parc. The EV Cable Hub UK Electric Vehicle Market Monitor 2026 recorded Northern Ireland at the lowest adoption rate, 3.1%.

Absolute counts and adoption rates produce two different league tables and both are published, because a region can lead on one and sit mid-table on the other. The South East holds 18.0% of the UK battery electric parc but has an adoption rate of 6.7%, below London's 8.9%. Northern Ireland is last on both measures, with 37,600 cars and a 3.1% adoption rate against a UK figure of 5.85%. The spread between the highest and lowest regional adoption rates is 5.8 percentage points, or almost a factor of three.

The naive reading of that spread is that charging provision drives adoption, and the correlations in the Monitor's 2026 analysis do not support it. Regional battery electric adoption correlates at 0.74 with off-street parking availability, 0.68 with median household income and 0.61 with company car prevalence, but only 0.42 with public charging devices per 100,000 residents and 0.29 with rapid devices per 100,000. Correcting that misreading is the most useful thing this section does.

The causal story the data supports runs the other way round. People buy battery electric cars where they can charge them cheaply overnight, which means where they have a driveway or a garage, and they buy them where the tax treatment of a company car makes the decision for them. Public charging follows demand rather than creating it, which is why its correlation with adoption is real but weak. That does not make public charging unimportant. It makes it important for a different reason, which is serving the 28.6% of battery electric households that have no off-street parking at all.

Growth rates tell a more encouraging story than levels. Every region grew its battery electric parc by more than 31% in the year, and the fastest growth was in the North East at 42.6%, the West Midlands at 41.4% and Yorkshire and the Humber at 40.8%. Those are three of the regions with below-average adoption rates. Adoption is broadening rather than concentrating further, and the regional spread on new registration share, from 19.4% to 34.6%, is narrower than the spread on parc adoption because the newer flow is more evenly distributed than the accumulated stock.

• Correlation between regional BEV adoption and off-street parking availability: 0.74
• Correlation between regional BEV adoption and median household income: 0.68
• Correlation between regional BEV adoption and company car prevalence: 0.61
• Correlation between regional BEV adoption and public charging devices per 100,000: 0.42
• Correlation between regional BEV adoption and rapid devices per 100,000: 0.29
• Highest local authority BEV adoption rate: 21.4%
• Lowest local authority BEV adoption rate: 1.8%
• Local authorities above 10% BEV adoption: 34
• Local authorities below 3% BEV adoption: 41
• Mean BEV adoption, urban authorities: 6.2%
• Mean BEV adoption, rural authorities: 5.1%

The EV parc by age, battery and range#

The mean age of a UK battery electric car was 3.6 years in 2026 against 9.4 years for the car parc as a whole. The EV Cable Hub UK Electric Vehicle Market Monitor 2026 recorded a mean battery capacity across the battery electric parc of 63.8 kWh and a mean WLTP range of 258 miles.

The battery electric parc is not a small version of the car parc, it is a much younger one. 66.5% of battery electric cars on UK roads are under three years old and only 3.2% are over eight. The car parc as a whole has a mean age of 9.4 years. That age gap is the reason so many comparisons between the two fleets mislead: a comparison of battery electric and petrol reliability, insurance cost or resale behaviour is largely a comparison of a three-year-old fleet against a nine-year-old one.

The cohort series is the useful artefact in this section, because it shows how quickly the fleet is improving. Mean battery capacity ran 48.2 kWh for cars registered in 2020, 58.4 kWh in 2022, 67.2 kWh in 2024 and 71.4 kWh in the first half of 2026, an increase of 48.1% in six years. Mean WLTP range ran 194, 241, 288 and 302 miles over the same cohorts, up 55.7%. A car bought today has 55.7% more range than one bought in 2020, and it is the range figure rather than the capacity figure that a buyer feels.

Charging capability has improved faster than either. Mean maximum DC rate across the parc is 118 kW but 168 kW for cars registered in the first half of 2026, and mean maximum AC intake 8.4 kW against 10.6 kW for the newest cohort. That divergence between parc and new registrations is the clearest single indicator of how much of the fleet's capability is locked in old cars: the average car on the road charges considerably more slowly than the average car being sold.

The AC intake distribution has direct equipment consequences and is worth setting out precisely. 641,000 battery electric cars on UK roads, 33.0% of the parc, are limited to 7.4kW or below on AC. 1,182,000 accept 11kW and 117,000 accept 22kW. A driver in the first group gains nothing from a cable or a charge point rated above 7.4kW; a driver in the third group loses two thirds of their charging speed if their cable is rated for single-phase only. Our guide to what the maximum AC intake figure means for your cable sets out how to match the two. Bidirectional capability remains a minority feature: 284,000 cars in the parc have vehicle-to-load, 14.6% of the fleet, and 41,000 have vehicle-to-grid, 2.1%.

• Mean age of a UK battery electric car: 3.6 years
• Mean age of the UK car parc: 9.4 years
• BEVs under 1 year old: 508,000
• BEVs 1 to 3 years old: 782,000
• BEVs 3 to 5 years old: 402,000
• BEVs 5 to 8 years old: 186,000
• BEVs over 8 years old: 62,000
• Mean battery capacity across the BEV parc: 63.8 kWh
• Mean battery capacity of BEVs registered in 2020: 48.2 kWh
• Registered in 2022: 58.4 kWh
• Registered in 2024: 67.2 kWh
• Registered in H1 2026: 71.4 kWh
• Increase in mean battery capacity, 2020 to 2026: +48.1%
• Mean WLTP range across the BEV parc: 258 miles
• Mean WLTP range of BEVs registered in 2020: 194 miles
• Registered in 2022: 241 miles
• Registered in 2024: 288 miles
• Registered in H1 2026: 302 miles
• Increase in mean WLTP range, 2020 to 2026: +55.7%
• BEVs in the parc with over 300 miles WLTP range: 486,000
• BEVs in the parc with under 150 miles WLTP range: 214,000
• Mean maximum DC charging rate, parc: 118 kW
• Mean maximum DC charging rate, H1 2026 registrations: 168 kW
• Mean maximum AC intake, parc: 8.4 kW
• Mean maximum AC intake, H1 2026 registrations: 10.6 kW
• BEVs in the parc limited to 7.4kW AC or below: 641,000
• Share of the parc limited to 7.4kW AC or below: 33.0%
• BEVs in the parc accepting 11kW AC: 1,182,000
• BEVs in the parc accepting 22kW AC: 117,000
• BEVs in the parc with V2L capability: 284,000
• BEVs in the parc with V2G capability: 41,000

Home charging access and cable ownership#

64.2% of UK battery electric car households had a dedicated home charge point in 2026, and 71.4% had off-street parking. The EV Cable Hub UK Electric Vehicle Market Monitor 2026 found battery electric drivers owned an average of 1.84 charging cables and that 18.6% relied entirely on public charging.

The structural finding in this section is a number moving in the wrong direction, and it is the most important one on the page for anyone planning charging provision. The share of battery electric households without off-street parking rose from 24.1% in the 2024 edition to 26.2% in 2025 and 28.6% in 2026. The share with a dedicated home charge point fell from 66.8% to 64.2% over the last year. Both moves have the same cause: adoption is spreading into housing stock with less off-street provision.

That is exactly what a widening market looks like, and it is not a problem with the cars. Early adopters were disproportionately people with driveways, because a driveway makes an electric car obviously cheaper to run. As adoption broadens into terraced streets and flats, the share of owners who can charge at home falls mechanically, and it will keep falling for as long as the market keeps widening. Every point it falls adds roughly 19,000 drivers to the group that depends on public charging.

Mean installed home charge point power is 7.1 kW, below the 10.6 kW mean AC intake of cars registered in the first half of 2026, so the domestic supply is now the limit rather than the car. 58.7% of home points are tethered with a mean installed cable length of 6.2 m and 41.3% are untethered, and those untethered households are the reason mean cable ownership sits above one.

Cable ownership itself is the closest thing this dataset has to a direct measure of practical charging behaviour. Drivers own 1.84 cables on average: 42.8% own exactly one, 38.4% own two and 18.8% own three or more. 61.2% also own a Mode 2 granny charger and 34.1% carry a spare in the car. 68.4% have replaced a cable with a longer one, which is the single most revealing statistic in the section. More than two thirds of drivers bought a cable that turned out to be too short for where they actually park.

The last two lines of the block are the commercial ones and they are stated as findings rather than as a pitch. 74.2% of new battery electric buyers received a cable with the car and 25.8% had to buy a Type 2 cable separately, at a mean first-cable spend of £118 and a mean replacement spend of £146. Our Type 2 charging cables and Mode 2 granny chargers cover both cases, and the cable speed test sets out what cables actually deliver against their rating.

• BEV households with off-street parking: 71.4%
• BEV households without off-street parking: 28.6%
• The same figure, 2024 edition: 24.1%
• BEV households with a dedicated home charge point: 64.2%
• BEV households charging from a three-pin socket at home: 9.8%
• BEV households with no home charging at all: 26.0%
• BEV drivers relying entirely on public charging: 18.6%
• BEV drivers with workplace charging available: 31.4%
• BEV drivers using workplace charging weekly: 22.8%
• Mean home charge point power: 7.1 kW
• Home charge points that are tethered: 58.7%
• Home charge points that are untethered: 41.3%
• Mean tethered cable length installed: 6.2 m
• Mean charging cables owned per BEV driver: 1.84
• BEV drivers owning exactly one cable: 42.8%
• Owning two cables: 38.4%
• Owning three or more: 18.8%
• BEV drivers who also own a Mode 2 granny charger: 61.2%
• BEV drivers who carry a spare cable in the vehicle: 34.1%
• BEV drivers who have bought a longer cable as a replacement: 68.4%
• Mean spend on a first charging cable: £118
• Mean spend on a replacement cable: £146
• BEV drivers who own a V2L adapter: 12.4%
• BEV drivers who own a charging cable lock: 8.4%
• New BEV buyers who received a cable with the car: 74.2%
• New BEV buyers who had to buy a Type 2 cable separately: 25.8%

Forecast to 2030 and 2035#

On the trajectory recorded across five editions of the Market Monitor, UK battery electric car registrations reach 1,182,000 a year by 2030 and battery electric cars reach 5,040,000 on the road. The EV Cable Hub UK Electric Vehicle Market Monitor 2026 central forecast puts the battery electric parc at 12,840,000 by 2035, 36.4% of the car parc.

Everything in this section is a model output rather than an observation and is labelled as such wherever it appears. The method is stated plainly so it can be argued with. A share-adoption curve is fitted to the observed registration share series across the five editions, which has gained an average of 6.4 percentage points a year over the last three. That share is applied to a total new car market held broadly flat at 2,060,000 units a year. The parc is then derived from registrations less scrappage, using the observed mean UK vehicle life of 14.2 years and an annual scrappage rate of 6.4%.

The central case has battery electric registrations passing 50% of the market in 2029 and reaching 85.8% by 2035. The parc lags a long way behind, as it must: 14.82% of the car parc in 2030 and 36.4% in 2035. Even in the high case, where share growth accelerates to eight percentage points a year, battery electric cars are 43.0% of the parc in 2035, which is to say that on no scenario in this model does the majority of cars on UK roads run on electricity before the middle of the next decade.

Three cases are published rather than one, and the spread between them is wide enough to be honest about the uncertainty. The low case, where share growth slows to three points a year, gives a 2035 parc of 9,640,000 and a parc share of 27.3%. The high case gives 15,180,000 and 43.0%. The 5,540,000 gap between low and high in 2035 is larger than the entire battery electric parc that exists today, which is the honest way to describe how much a forecast at that horizon is worth.

The infrastructure consequences are the part of the model that matters for everything else on this site. The central case requires 214,460 additional public charging devices by 2030 and 14.14 GW of additional installed capacity. It requires 1,984,000 additional home charge points, which at current installation rates is the harder of the two requirements. And at 1.84 cables per driver it implies 9,274,000 charging cables in circulation by 2030 against roughly 3.6 million today.

One feature of the central case is counterintuitive and worth flagging. Battery electric cars per public charging device improve from 20.1 in 2026 to 16.1 in 2030 and then worsen again to 17.3 by 2035, because the device build-out front-loads while the parc keeps compounding. Provision per vehicle is not a monotonic story in either direction.

A forecast is worth more if its errors are published, so this one commits to that. The 2025 edition's central case put the battery electric parc at 30 June 2026 at 1,884,000 against an observed 1,940,000, an error of 3.0% under. Its registration forecast for the first half of 2026 was 259,000 against an observed 268,400, an error of 3.5% under. The 2027 edition will publish this edition's error in the same way.

• Year in which BEV registrations overtake petrol registrations, central case: 2029
• Year in which BEV registrations pass 50% share, central case: 2029
• Year in which the BEV parc passes 5 million, central case: 2030
• Year in which the BEV parc passes 10 million, central case: 2034
• Year in which BEVs pass 25% of the car parc, central case: 2033
• Mean UK vehicle life used in the parc model: 14.2 years
• Annual scrappage rate applied: 6.4%
• Total new car market held at, central case: 2,060,000 a year
• Additional charging devices required by 2030, central case: 214,460
• Additional installed capacity required by 2030: 14.14 GW
• Additional home charge points required by 2030: 1,984,000
• Charging cables required by 2030 at 1.84 per driver: 9,274,000

Year on year, 2025 against 2026#

Every headline measure in the EV Cable Hub UK Electric Vehicle Market Monitor rose between the 2025 and 2026 editions except two. The battery electric parc rose 38.6% and registrations 26.8%, while the mean new battery electric list price fell 3.8% and the mean used battery electric transaction price fell 8.2%.

Twenty-five measures are tracked across the two editions and the comparison table is built as a permanent fixture. Every January the previous year's column moves left, a new column appears on the right and the section is republished, so the series lengthens rather than being replaced. That is what makes a longitudinal comparison possible from a single page.

The largest movement in the table is electric HGVs at 82.9%, from a base of 350 vehicles to 640, which is the smallest base of any measure tracked and should be read accordingly. The largest movement on a meaningful base is the used market at 42.4%, followed by the parc at 38.6% and electric vans at 34.2%. Registrations at 26.8% grew more slowly than the parc, which is arithmetic rather than a slowdown: the parc compounds every registration while registrations are measured fresh each period.

The two falling measures are the interesting ones and they are related. Mean new list price fell 3.8% and mean used transaction price fell 8.2%, roughly twice as fast. A used market prices against replacement cost, so a falling new price pushes used values down harder than it pushes new values down. That relationship is the single most useful thing in this table for anyone trying to forecast used values, and it will keep operating for as long as new prices keep falling.

Three measures are worth watching into the next edition. The private buyer share reversal, from 24.6% to 28.2%, is the first movement of its kind the index has recorded and one year does not make a trend. The small-segment price premium, at 12.6% in city cars and 18.4% in superminis, is close enough to parity that another year of the same movement would eliminate it. And the used price trajectory determines whether falling retained values stabilise or keep compounding, which is the question that decides monthly costs for every driver on a contract.

Previous editions of the Market Monitor#

This is the fifth annual edition of the EV Cable Hub UK Electric Vehicle Market Monitor. The first edition, published in January 2022, recorded 395,000 battery electric cars on UK roads, meaning the parc has grown 391.1% across the life of the index.

The archive exists for one reason: a statistic is more useful when the reader can see how it was measured before. Across five editions the mean new battery electric list price has run £48,240, £47,610, £46,180, £45,930 and £44,180, and the battery electric share of registrations 11.6%, 16.6%, 16.5%, 19.6% and 23.3%. That series is not available from a single source anywhere else, and it exists here only because every edition has been kept.

Each annual edition is snapshotted to a permanent dated page carrying that year's figures, and each monthly registrations tracker to its own dated page carrying that month's registration table and the rolling twelve-month figure. Archive pages carry a canonical pointer back to this live page and a banner naming the edition they hold, so a reader who arrives at an old page knows immediately that a newer one exists.

Archive pages are never deleted and never redirected. A citation made to the January 2024 edition still resolves to the January 2024 figures in 2030, which is the only way a longitudinal reference works. The live page at this URL always carries the current edition, so a link made to it stays current automatically. Those two behaviours are deliberately different and both are needed.

The cadence matters as much as the archive. A page that publishes once a year is a report. A page that publishes a registration figure every month, a parc figure every quarter and a full edition every January is an index, and an index accumulates references in a way a report does not.

Interactive tools#

A running cost calculator, two comparators built on the 2026 tables, a searchable table of every figure on this page and a twenty-item switching checklist that remembers where you got to. Everything runs in the browser and nothing is sent anywhere.

Each tool draws on the tables above rather than on a separate dataset, so every result can be checked against the published figures. Where a tool would have needed data this edition does not publish (a postcode-level adoption lookup, for instance, or a full cross-tabulation of every measure against every breakdown for every past period), it has been left out rather than filled in with estimates.

Methodology#

Every figure on this page comes from one of four EV Cable Hub studies conducted between January and June 2026: a full vehicle parc reconciliation, a continuous registration tracker, a used transaction study and a driver survey. No figure on this page is drawn from any outside source.

• Parc: vehicles licensed and on the road at the stated date. Not the same as cumulative registrations, because vehicles are scrapped and exported
• Registrations: new vehicles registered for the first time in the stated period
• BEV: battery electric vehicle, no combustion engine
• PHEV: plug-in hybrid, combustion engine plus a battery chargeable from an external supply
• HEV: full hybrid, no external charging
• Plug-in: BEV plus PHEV
• Market share: share of new registrations in the period, not share of the parc
• Adoption rate: BEVs as a share of the car parc in that area
• Retained value: observed transaction price as a percentage of the original list price for the same specification

Used transaction data covers dealer-recorded transactions and under-represents private sales. Battery state of health is recorded on 34.6% of used transactions and is not a full sample. Survey sub-samples for plug-in hybrid owners and for households without off-street parking are small and should be read as indicative. Forecast figures are a model output, not an observation, and are presented in three scenarios for that reason. Publishing the limitations is what makes the rest defensible.

Frequently asked questions#

Twenty-eight questions on the UK electric vehicle market, each answered with the 2026 figure first.

Every answer below is drawn from the tables on this page. Where a figure is modelled rather than measured it is described as such.