Despite some negative headlines from a vocal minority, Britain’s millionth battery electric vehicle (BEV) was registered in January and the speed of electrification is accelerating amongst fleets.
The trend, which saw large fleets and businesses take 77.1% of BEV volumes in 2023, shows that the Government’s decision to push back the ban on sales of new petrol and diesel cars from 2030 to 2035 has not undermined the sector’s enthusiasm for electric cars.
With fleets at the forefront of this growth, we could see the majority of businesses operating solely fully-electric cars within the next few years, yet the spotlight has been on slowing retail sales of BEVs, where the lack of incentives is reflected in lower demand.
With fleets driving demand for BEVs, the sector’s importance to the wider new car market is also increasingly evident.
Up by 10.4%, the overall new car market secured its 20th successive month of growth in March. This growth is entirely due to fleets and businesses, which saw an increase of 29.6% compared to the same month last year. Sales to private buyers actually fell by -7.7% in the same period, mostly due to weak consumer confidence and the current high interest rates.
This all means that fleets are continuing to claim an increasingly large slice of the overall new car market. Growing to nearly 54.7% last year, the pattern has continued into 2024 with a year-to-date market share of 59.8%.
While the growth in fleet sales won’t go on forever, we are likely to see the sector outshining retail sales for much of 2024 and potentially the following couple of years. If that is the case, it is no exaggeration to say that the vast majority of fleets will have transitioned to electric vehicles before 2030 – that’s five years ahead of the current ban on new petrol and diesel cars.
For fleets, the EV transition reaches beyond just the vehicles on the road, they must also consider and plan for what happens when a vehicle is taken off the road.
Motor Assist and its EV-for-EV guarantee is a flexible, modular incident management solution that perfectly fills that role. With fleets leading the way in EV registrations, the need for an incident management service with an integrated EV-for-EV guarantee has never been greater.
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Don’t need FNOL? Your solution won’t have it. Want us to handle your repair management? We’ve got you covered. Need us to provide a full, end-to-end incident management solution? We can do that.
From the service and support to the technology behind Motor Assist, our solution will help your company reach its full potential.
