UK's New Car Sales Down, Despite Higher Demand For Plug-Ins

Record demand for electric and hybrid cars couldn’t prevent another slump in January.

Record demand for ‘alternatively fuelled’ cars such as hybrids and electric vehicles couldn’t stop the UK new car market declining by more than seven percent last month.

Figures from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) showed that just under 150,000 new cars were registered during the first month of 2020. That’s a drop of 7.3 percent compared with January 2019, when more than 161,000 new cars hit the road.

And that reduction came despite record demand for so-called alternatively fuelled vehicles, which includes hybrids, electric vehicles (EVs) and hydrogen cars. Last month, more than 4,000 electric cars were registered — an increase of more than 200 percent on the first month of 2019, when just over 1,300 EVs were registered.