UK sees record boom in battery electric vehicles in 2021: SMMT

London [UK], January 7: Britain's new car market in 2021, though hit by the COVID-19 pandemic and semiconductor shortage, saw a record boom in battery electric vehicles (BEVs), with the registrations exceeding the previous five years combined, an industry report said Thursday.Nearly 191,000 new BEVs joined Britain's roads last year, along with nearly 115,000 plug-in hybrids (PHEVs), meaning 18.5 percent of all new cars registered in 2021 can be plugged in, said the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT), the trade association for the British motor industry, in the report.On top of that, more than 147,000 hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) were registered, and now 27.5 percent of the total market was electrified in some form, the statistics showed.The soaring electrified car registrations, however, stood in contrast to the poor performance of petrol and diesel ones. Overall, new car registrations in Britain grew by only 1.0 percent year on year to 1.65 million, down 28.7 percent on pre-pandemic 2019, representing the second worst year since 1992, the SMMT said."The figures underline the ongoing impact of COVID and the semiconductor shortage on the industry," it added.Britain finished 2021 as the third largest European market for new car registrations but the second largest by volume for plug-in vehicles and the second largest for BEVs, according to the trade association.In October 2021, before the rise of the Omicron variant, it was forecast that year 2022 would see 1.96 million new car registrations."The biggest obstacle to our shared net zero ambitions is not product availability, however, but cost and charging infrastructure," SMMT Chief Executive Mike Hawes said."Recent cuts to incentives and home charging grants should be reversed and we need to boost the roll out of public on-street charging with mandated targets, providing every driver, wherever they live, with the assurance they can charge where they want and when they want," the association leader added.Source: Xinhua