The number of new vehicles registered in the UK in 2022 was down 4% compared with the previous year, but the number of new plug-in vehicles rose by 21%.
Latest figures just released by the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) for 2022 show that 2,178,000 vehicles were registered for the first time in the UK.
A total of 395,000 plug-in vehicles were registered for the first time over the same period, and at the end of the year there were 1.114 million licensed plug-in vehicles on the road, representing 2.8% of all vehicles, compared with 1.9% the previous year.
Registrations of battery electric (BEV) cars were up 40% on the previous year at 267,000.
Despite the reduced number of registrations, fewer older vehicles being taken off the road resulted in a total 40.7 million licensed vehicles in the UK, an increase of 1.0% compared with the end of December 2021.
The DVLA also gave a breakdown of fuel types for cars showing new registrations comprised:
- 821,000 petrol cars (50%)
- 332,000 HEV cars (20%)
- 267,000 BEV cars (16%)
- 128,000 diesel cars (8%)
- 101,000 PHEV cars (6%)
- 4,000 using other fuel types (0.2%).
Compared to 2021, the number of new car registrations by fuel type were:
- petrol decreased by 10%
- diesel decreased by 34%
- HEV increased by 26%
- PHEV decreased by 12%
- BEV increased by 40%.
Looking at longer-term trends over five years, compared to 2017 the number of new car registrations by fuel type were:
- petrol decreased by 40%
- diesel decreased by 88%
- HEV increased by 359% (around 4.5 times higher)
- PHEV increased by 207% (around 3 times higher)
- BEV increased by 1,818% (around 19 times higher).
