Today, the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) revealed its monthly figures for new car sales in the UK, for the previous month. On the whole, it reveals that new car sales were up by 12.4% and private sales were up by 14.5%, the latter bucking the recent trend of declining showroom sales, as the buying public are leasing more than usual and taking advantage of salary sacrifice schemes. This also means that March 2025 was the best March for new car sales since 2019.

Important Note: When private customers lease cars, they show up as fleet in the SMMT data. This is because technically, the leasing company owns the car and was the one who registered it.

The big story with the sales figures is the rapid growth surrounding electrified vehicles. Hybrids are up by 27.7%, plug-in-hybrids are up by 37.9% and pure electric is up by a huge 43.2%. Pure EV now has a market share of 19.4%.

Elsewhere, traditional pure ICE car sales were down again. Both petrol and diesel sales were down, with petrol dropping by 0.4% and diesel dropping by 10.1%. Petrol now has less than a 50% market share, at 49.5% and diesel has dropped down to just 5.9%.

For 2025, new car sales must have a mix of 28% pure EV sales, as mandated by the government. For 2024, this target was sat at 22% - so as it stands, the current sales are behind, even when compared to last year. However, the SMMT is confident this will pick up, as usually for March figures, EVs have only ever been around 16%. The SMMT said that this is a "strong indicator of likely overall annual performance".

Elsewhere in the industry, electric vehicles that cost over £40,000 will now need to pay additional VED (road tax) fee. Any new electric vehicle (or hydrogen) that has a list price over £40,000 (including options) will now have an additional charge of £425 on top of the VED. So if you purchase a new EV (that is over £40k) and it is registered on the 1st April or afterwards, the first year of VED will be £10 and then £620 per year for five years, when it'll go back down to £195 per year.

Vauxhall has made some recent changes to help out consumers and reduce the amount of VED they must pay. The firm has said that all of its EVs now cost under £40,000.

Source: SMMT