Ultra-low carbon vehicle league table

Outlander stays ahead of Leaf

The Mitsubishi Outlander plug-in hybrid continues to dominate the ultra-low carbon car and van league table with 21,708 of the vehicles licensed in the UK at the end of Q2 2016.

The Outlander makes up 33% of the total of 66,374 plug-in grant eligible vehicles on the road.

In second place after the Outlander comes the pure battery-electric Nissan Leaf at 12,837.

In third place is the BMW i3 (4,457) which is available with a choice of drive trains: pure battery electric or a range extended version (where a petrol internal combustion engine is used to recharge the battery on long journeys).

The Renault Zoe (4,339) is fourth most common, followed by the Mercedes-Benz C350e (3,337) which has leapt ahead of the Tesla Model S (3,312) and Volkswagen Golf GTE (2,657) to take fifth place.

The Outlander, Mercedes-Benz C350e and BMW 330e were the only three cars to increase their licensed numbers by more than a 1,000 in Q2 2016.

Four of the five vehicles with the highest growth in licensed numbers over the quarter were plug-in hybrid (PHEV) versions of regular cars:

Mitsubishi Outlander (PHEV) – 1,763 increase
Mercedes-Benz C350e (PHEV) – 1,439
BMW 330e (PHEV) – 1,113
Golf GTE (PHEV) – 687
Tesla S (pure battery powered) – 486

This is the list of all 41 vehicles that are, or have been, eligible for the government’s plug-in car and van grant schemes and which were on the road in the UK at the end of Q2 2016 (the most recent date for which figures are available).

Rank	Make and Model	Q2 2016	Q1 2016	Q4 2015	Q3 2015	Q2 2015
1	Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV (all variants)	21,708	19,945	16,100	14,099	12,066
2	Nissan Leaf	12,837	12,469	11,219	10,441	9,310
3	BMW i3 (of which are range extended versions)	4,457 (3,131)	4,065 (2,855)	3,574 (2,440)	2,943 (1,940)	2,484 (1,579)
4	Renault Zoe	4,339	3,918	3,327	2,401	2,062
5	Mercedes-Benz C350e	3,337	1,898	628	128	19
6	Tesla Model S	3,312	2,826	2,087	1,346	1,047
7	Volkswagen Golf GTE	2,657	1,970	1,359	1,025	350
8	Toyota Prius Plug-in Hybrid	1,655	1,651	1,580	1,501	1,439
9	Audi A3 e-tron	1,634	1,445	1,218	1,033	570
10	Nissan e-NV200 (all variants)	1,487	1,243	1,047	896	705
11	BMW 330e	1,479	340	–	–
12	BMW i8	1,307	1,163	1,022	964	823
13	Vauxhall Ampera	1,267	1,261	1,272	1,279	1,250
14	Volvo XC90 T8 Twin Engine	813	561	38	–	–
15	Renault Kangoo ZE	785	755	740	731	719
16	Porsche Panamera S E-Hybrid	475	454	395	361	336
17	Volvo V60 Plug-in Hybrid (all variants)	410	366	337	314	299
18	Peugeot Ion	405	383	374	371	368
19	Mercedes-Benz B-Class Electric Drive	303	193	162	157	61
20	Mitsubishi i-Miev	252	257	251	250	252
21	Smart ForTwo Electric Drive	215	214	212	216	215
22	Citroen C-Zero	213	192	167	199	205
23	Kia Soul EV	193	170	145	83	53
24	BMW 225xe	163	65	–	–
25	Volkswagen e-up!	154	150	142	133	124
26	Mercedes-Benz S500 Hybrid	125	129	157	159	138
27	Volkswagen e-Golf	123	120	114	98	88
28	Chevrolet Volt	119	122	122	119	125
29	Renault Fluence	79	78	70	71	71
30	Ford Focus Electric	22	19	19	21	23
30	Daimler Mercedes-Benz Vito E-Cell	22	23	23	21	27
32	Mia (all variants)	15	15	15	14	12
33	Toyota Mirai	11	9	4	2
34	Volkswagen Passat GTE	1	1
35	BYD e6	–	–	–	–	–
=	BD Otomotiv eTraffic	–	–	–	–	–
=	BD Otomotiv eDucato	–	–	–	–	–
=	Citroen Berlingo EV	–	–	–	–	–
=	Peugeot ePartner	–	–	–	–	–
=	Smith Electric Smith Edison	–	–	–	–	–
=	Mahindra e20	–	–
	Total	66,374	58,470	47,920	41,376	35,241

Note: Some of the vehicles above might have been bought without the grant. Some might be licensed to manufacturers and dealers rather than customers. The total number licensed is below the total number of grants claimed because of the lag between an order being placed and the car being delivered.

Steve Gooding, director of the RAC Foundation, said:

“Getting more clean vehicles on the road is crucial to help tackle both climate change and poor air quality yet while there are a record 31.6 million cars on the UK’s roads, just 0.2% are ultra-green.

“At the start of the month MPs on the Environmental Audit Committee said they had no confidence in the UK achieving its long-term goals for greening the car fleet.

“Car companies selling ultra-green vehicles will be looking at these figures closely. On 1 March the maximum grant dropped from £5,000 per car to £4,500 and because of a new tiered system, some grants – including those for the Outlander – are now no more than £2,500.

“In a rapidly evolving, but still fledgling market it is hard to discern trends but with the plug-in car grant scheme due for another revision within six months the concern must be that the market will remain fragile, and so we are quite some way from being able to drop the grants completely.

“Given that a 5p charge for a plastic bag changed the shopping behaviour of millions, it should be no surprise that when thousands of pounds are at stake drivers are very shrewd about their buying decisions. The cost of green cars is pivotal to their take up and the market will remain acutely sensitive to changes in price whether that is driven by manufacturers or ministers.

“One hopeful sign is that there is an ever increasing number of green vehicles in the showroom and some manufacturers like VW have publicly pinned their hopes on alternatively-fuelled cars.”

On 1 September 2016 the Environmental Audit Committee published its report on Sustainability in the Department for Transport:

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201617/cmselect/cmenvaud/184/18408.htm?utm_source=184&utm_medium=crbullet&utm_campaign=modulereports

Mary Creagh MP, chair of the Committee, said:

“The uptake of ultra-low emission vehicles like electric cars, is too low to meet the UK’s climate change targets at the lowest cost to the public. Air quality targets that were supposed to be met in 2010 won’t be hit until 2020 at the earliest. And it’s been almost a year since we discovered VW had fitted cars with cheat devices, but government has still to decide what action to take against the company.”

ENDS

Contacts:

Philip Gomm – Head of External Communications – RAC Foundation

020 7747 3445 | 07711 776448 | [email protected]

Notes to editors:

The RAC Foundation is a transport policy and research organisation that explores the economic, mobility, safety and environmental issues relating to roads and their users. The Foundation publishes independent and authoritative research with which it promotes informed debate and advocates policy in the interest of the responsible motorist.

The RAC Foundation is a registered charity, number 1002705.

On 1 March 2016 changes were made to the structure of the plug-in car grant scheme with certain vehicles recategorised. This is a link to an explanation of the new eligibility criteria and grant levels:

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/502056/plug-in-grant-rate-changes-2016.pdf

Details of the Foundation’s work is available at www.racfoundation.org

The licensing figures by model are available to view on the RAC Foundation website:

http://www.racfoundation.org/data/plug-in-grant-eligible-vehicles-licensed-by-quarter

It is available to embed on your website using the following code:

The overall number of plug-in car and van grant eligible vehicles licensed plotted over time (broken down by pure electric versus plug-in hybrids) is also available on the same webpage:

http://www.racfoundation.org/data/plug-in-grant-eligible-vehicles-licensed-by-quarter

It is available to embed on your website using the following code:

Battery-powered cars slip behind plug-in hybrids in ultra-green race14 Sep 2016

Outlander stays ahead of Leaf