About UK Automotive

NFDA is the leading representative body of the UK’s automotive retail car and commercial vehicle dealers; retaining 85% of UK dealers in membership. There are around 4,500 franchise outlets in the UK.

Industry facts:

• UK auto retail turnover is around 193 billion (annually).
• Turnover from sales of cars is around 145 billion (annually).
• Around 5 million new and used cars are sold every year through franchised auto retailers.
• Top 100 franchised dealers have combined turnover of £56.6bn, top 10 NFDA around £26bn.
• 35,082,800 cars on the UK roads in 2021, 40.35 million in total.
• 4.6 million vans, an increase of 29% in the past decade.
• 589,445 trucks, an increase of 5% in the past decade.
• UK automotive retail employs 781,80.
  
• 2.5% of total UK employment.
  
• Between August 21 and July 22 there have been 6,767 new apprenticeship starts in UK auto retail, 5-year average of 10,093.
  

Vehicle registrations:

• Second-hand car registrations reached over 6.8 million in 2022, an 8.5% drop from the preceding year.
• New car registrations reach 1.6 million in 2022, a 2% drop from 2021.

Imports & Exports

• 86% of cars sold in the UK are imports.
• 859,575 million cars built in the UK in 2021, down nearly 50% from 2016 (1.7million).
• 705,826 cars exported in 2021, meaning 8 out of 10 (82.1%) cars in the UK are exported.
• 55% of UK exports go to EU27, 16.8% of UK exports go to USA and 8.1% going to China.
  
• 4^th largest car manufacturing country in EU and 16^th in the world.

Electric Vehicle (EV) Fact & Figures:

Vehicle Registrations

• Plug-in EV’s made up 22.9% of new vehicles sold by the end of December 2022. (16.6% BEV and 6.3% PHEV) In 2020, this was 10.7% of new vehicles sold.
• At the end of February 2023 on UK roads there were more than 1,155,000 plug-in cars with approximately 690,000 battery-electric cars, and a further 460,000 plug-in hybrids.
• 4.5% of road vehicles in Britain are electric.
• More than 265,000 battery-electric cars were registered in 2022, a growth of 40% on 2021.
  
• Electric vehicle registrations continue to rise in absolute numbers, with 17,033 new registrations in February 2023 (12,310 BEVs and 4,723 PHEVs), the market share last month was 22.8% and giving BEVs a market share of 16.5% of all new car registrations.

EV vs ICE price comparisons

• The cost of a breakdown for an EV is 2.7 times more than that of an internal combustion engine car.
• Generally, EVs cost around 12% more to insure than ICE vehicles – more expensive to buy and repair.
• Repair costs are also higher, deriving from the average higher costs of vehicle components; as well as lower technician availability to repair EVs.
• Higher depreciation values for Electric vehicles due to technological advancements in range, battery efficiency, weight reduction etc.

Electric Infrastructure:

• As of 1 January 2023, there were 37,055 public electric vehicle charging devices installed in the UK
• 6,887 were rated “rapid” devices or above, this represents 19% of all charging devices.
• 21,225 were rated “fast” chargers, this represents 57% of all charging devices.
• Since 1 January 2022 the number of installed public devices has increased by 8,680, a 31% increase.
• The number of rapid charging or above devices increased by 34%, an additional 1,731 public devices installed.
• Home charging is generally cheaper than public charging and BP Pulse reckons that 80% of electric car owners plug in on their driveway.