As summer (did we actually have one?) becomes a distant memory, the nights slowly draw in and Christmas “tat” starts to appear in the High Street shops, vehicle manufacturers will be very aware that the end of the year is nigh, and that those ZEV Mandate targets, in most (but not all) cases look to be more than challenging to achieve.
Once again, and I’m sounding like a stuck vinyl record (remember those?) here, the August registration figures are a little underwhelming to say the least, especially when you look at electric vans in isolation. The whole LCV market is up a modest 1.7% compared to August 2023, and year-to-date we’re 2.7% ahead of where we were this time last year.
Against this, August sees electric vans take a market share of 5.5%, up from 3.7% last year, and year-to-date 2024 is showing 5.1% compared to 5.7% in 2023. But – the devil is in the detail. A whopping 35% of August’s EV registrations were made by Peugeot, selling 314 vans. An excellent achievement but, the vast majority of these were sold to a single national fleet customer. In August 2023 Peugeot sold 70 electric vans. If you assume the same this year (after removing the fleet distortion) by my calculation this takes the August 2024 EV market share down to 4.06%…
Further, less than positive news comes from the over 3.5t GVM sector (almost all will be the 4.25 GVM offerings from most manufacturers). August 2023 saw 181 units registered. This August? Just 27. This under-performance is almost certainly down to the uncertainty felt by van operators towards the licence derogation and associated factors which could easily be sorted by government legislation.
A quick rundown of manufacturer performance in the month and year to date – Nissan had a great month, 27% of the company’s registrations being electric. This puts them at 13.2% year to date, looking good for the 10% ZEV Mandate target. Toyota also had a good month with 14% but needs to up it’s game before the year end, 7.3% YTD not being quite good enough. Other manufacturers have slipped somewhat, such as Vauxhall with just 3% in August, a performance matched by Mercedes-Benz and Renault. Ford slumped to under 1%.
So, with only 4 months left of 2024, just Peugeot, Nissan and Maxus are running year-to-date at over 10%. Is there enough time for the others to play catch up, or are they relying on buying credits from the winners, credits for over-achieving on Co2 output targets or, just adding the numbers onto the 2025 target? Perhaps they’ve just budgeted for some hefty fines? One thing is for sure, we’re going to see some intense, price-led marketing activity as the year draws to a close, and the only winners will be the van buyers who could be getting the deal of the decade.
We DESPERATELY need the government to act to promote the uptake of electric vans – yet another month has passed by with no positive movement. Labour is in receipt of the industry backed ‘Zero Emission Van Plan’ which highlights just what action could be taken and although the new government is but a few months old, we’ve seen nothing whatsoever to help the industry. Have vans been forgotten? Possibly – although the cut-off date for cars is likely to be brought forward to the original date of 2030, there is no mention of vans, and the industry urgently needs some clarification and a lot of action.
