EVs Buck Trend for Declining Auto Production in the UK

U.K. car production was down nearly 10% in 2022 but electric vehicle (EV) production rose.

Data published by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) on Thursday (Jan. 26), reveals that in total, 775,014 units were manufactured in the U.K. last year, a 9.8% decrease from 2021 and 40.5% lower than the 1,303,135 cars made in 2019 before the pandemic.

The SMMT blamed the ongoing global chip shortage and “structural changes” for the depressed output, which affected the export market more than it did domestic car sales.

In fact, volumes for the U.K. rose 9.4%, the report notes, but with eight in 10 U.K.-manufactured cars shipped abroad, this failed to offset declining exports, which were down 14.0%.

Although the overall picture for British car manufacturers is one of declining volumes, in the same period, U.K. factories turned out a record 234,066 battery-electric, plug-in hybrid and hybrid electric vehicles, the SMMT reported.

Overall, that means that combined volumes of EVs rose 4.5% in 2022 to reach almost a third (30.2%) of all car production.

What’s more, businesses across the country have been moving ahead with efforts to put more electric cars on British roads.

On Monday, PYMNTS reported that Geely, the company that produces London’s iconic black cabs, has ambitions to turn the capital’s taxi fleet 100% electric.

Then on Wednesday (Jan. 25), the London-based EV subscription platform Onto announced that it had secured a 100-million-pound ($123.9 million) credit facility to help ramp up its capacity.

Despite all the optimism, last week, the U.K. EV industry was dealt a major blow by the news that Britishvolt, a company that intended to start manufacturing batteries for EVs in the country, had collapsed into administration.

The firm was planning to build a 3.8-billion-pound ($4.7 billion) factory in the north of England, which would have produced enough batteries for over 300,000 electric vehicles a year.

Its failure leaves the Automotive Energy Supply Corporation (AESC), a joint venture between Envision Group and Nissan, as the only U.K.-based manufacturer of EV batteries. And with a ban on the sale of fossil fuel-powered vehicles in 2030 looming, the question of whether the country’s automotive industry is sufficiently prepared hangs in the air.

Commenting on Thursday’s data, Mike Hawes, CEO at SMMT, said: “The potential for [the EV manufacturing] sector to deliver economic growth by building more of these zero-emission models is self-evident, however, we must make the right decisions now.

“This means shaping a strategy to drive rapid upscaling of U.K. battery production and the shift to electric vehicles based on the U.K. automotive sector’s fundamental strengths.”

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