Specifically, What Car has revealed the stats of the new car sales in the UK and the best-selling car is… well, we’ll get to that. First, let’s talk about fuel.
Petrol vs. Diesel vs. Electricity
Out of the 186,128 vehicles sold, 59% were powered – unsurprisingly – by petrol. So let’s call stinky petrol cars the unfortunate overall winners of last month. Their stinky counterparts, however, didn’t do so well. Less than one in every ten cars sold in the UK was powered by diesel — so we’ve definitely found our losers. Especially when we consider their sales throughout the first six months of 2021 have dropped almost 22% compared to 2020. The following category is what I like to call the upcoming winners, the EVs. Sales of electric vehicles surpassed 19,800 units, which means 10.6% of new cars sold last month were electric. Well done, Brits!
The UK’s top 10 best-selling cars
What about individual models? Can we also see the trend towards electrification there? Surprisingly, yes! The best-selling car in June was, in fact, an EV! The Tesla Model 3 dominated sales with a total of 5,468 units sold. Suck it, Earth-destroyers. And that’s not the only good news. The Vauxhall Corsa, which is available as an all-electric, came fourth… although What Car doesn’t specify which Corsa was bought, so we’ll need to curb our enthusiasm a little. A couple of hybrids also made it to the list (yay?), with Toyota Yaris in seventh place and the BMW 3 series in ninth. Although, same as with the Corsa, the BMW 3 series numbers likely include its stinkier personas. In any case, the fact that an electric vehicle grabbed first place — and EVs were 10.6% of sold cars in June — is certainly an optimistic sign for the UK’s car market’s shift towards more sustainable models. If you’re interested in knowing the rest of the cars that made the top ten, here’s the full list: Do EVs excite your electrons? Do ebikes get your wheels spinning? Do self-driving cars get you all charged up? Then you need the weekly SHIFT newsletter in your life. Click here to sign up.
