New car sales DOWN 29.4% in 2020 – Quelle Surprise – and TESLA the best-selling car in December

New car registrations/sales were down by 29.4 per cent in the UK in 2020, although BEV sales grew and the Tesla Model 3 was December’s best-seller.

Car sales/registrations have been devastated by the Covid pandemic in 2020, and the final tally for a miserable year for the car industry is a drop of 29.4 per cent, the biggest percentage drop since WWII and the lowest figure since 1992.

The numbers are quite stark, although they could have been a lot worse, with 1.63 million cars registered, a drop of 680k on 2019, although the pandemic has seen sales of electrified cars soar.

Actual BEV sales have grown by 186 per cent and the number of PHEVs by 91 per cent, with BEVs selling 108k for a market share of 6.6 per cent and PHEVs selling 67k for a market share of 4 per cent.

Diesel sales continue to decline as they have since Dieselgate – down 55 per cent on 2019 – with petrol/ MHEV petrol accounting for more than half of sales.

In amongst the gloom – and related to the rise and rise of EVs – Tesla had a good year in the UK, with its sales model largely unaffected by lockdown, coming top of the sales tree in December, and MG managed to grow its sales too, thanks in no small part to its new EV offerings.

Perhaps, with Brexit sorted, to a degree, and hope on the horizon with the Covid vaccine, 2021 may simply be a technology challenge for car makers as they deliver more and more EVs, rather than the Covid-impacted sales challenge 2020 was.