By May 5 2020 - 9:55pm

Tesla Model 3 Is UK’s Top selling Car in April 2020

The UK’s motor industry trade body, the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) reported today on the catastrophic fall in car registrations during April 2020. Year on year, the market fell 97.3% to its lowest level since 1946, with just 4321 registrations, this due to the widespread lockdown and unprecedented economic slowdown due to Covid 19. The UK is unfortunately one of the European countries worst affected by this virus.
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The battery electric vehicles have registered a massive increase in market share

In these terrible times, at least some good news, albeit tempered by the toll that the virus has had on human life, and economic carnage wrought on companies both small and large.

From 0.9% market share in April 2019, BEVs increased their market share to 31.8%. In absolute terms BEV sales registrations dropped just 9.7% from 1522 to 1374.

Tesla Model 3 in first place

Normally Tesla’s exports to Europe are timed to coincide with the end of the quarter, so it’s interesting to see Tesla doing well in the first month of quarter two. SMMT usually report Tesla’s registrations as “other imports”, so it’s also interesting to see SMMT has split out the numbers for Model 3. Until now Tesla has not been a member of SMMT and has shied away from reporting monthly statistics.

So with 648 sales, Tesla Model 3 achieved pole position and 15% market share.

Interestingly registrations under the category “other imports” totalled 822 cars (19% market share), although it’s impossible to see if these were primarily all Tesla (M3, S and X) as has previously been the case.

Jaguar I Pace also performed well, taking second place with 367 registrations (8.5% market share).

In the meantime, Tesla is improving it's "million-mile" battery and we should expect better Tesla cars with longer mileage in the next year or two.

Reference: SMMT

Andy Granger is a freelance writer and automotive expert with over forty years of experience in the industry. He currently divides his time between Perth, Australia and the Solomon Islands.