New Car Sales YoY

New Car Sales YoY, officially New car registrations, tracks yearly percent change in new passenger cars (PC) registered in the United Kingdom. ACEA, the European Automobile Manufacturers' Association, compiles it as a census, a full count from official licensing files. United Kingdom data arrive via the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT). It covers new cars only, not used cars, commercial vehicles, production or models, and it gives no brand-by-country split.

The reference period is one calendar month of registrations, reported with year-to-date totals from January to that month. Dates are fixed in advance on the Statistics press release calendar, usually a Tuesday to Thursday in the third or fourth week after the month. Releases stay under embargo until 6.00 CET in winter or 6.00 CEST in summer, and there is no standalone July release.

Each release carries power-source commentary, monthly and year-to-date tables by market and power source, and manufacturer tables. Current and previous year figures are provisional and move as licensing files are corrected. The Association Auxilliaire de l'Automobile compiles the annual consolidation.

The headline sums six fuel-type groups, so electric gains can offset petrol and diesel losses.

• Battery-electric (BEV): cars powered only by a battery.
• Plug-in hybrid (PHEV): hybrid cars charged from an external source.
• Hybrid-electric (HEV): full and mild hybrids.
• Petrol: cars burning petrol, a combustion fuel in structural decline.
• Diesel: cars burning diesel, a combustion fuel in structural decline.
• Others: fuel-cell, natural gas, LPG, E85/ethanol and other residual fuels.

December 2024, published January 21, 2025, shows why the split matters, as the United Kingdom total fell 0.2% to 140,786 cars from 141,092. Battery-electric registrations surged 56.8% to 43,656 from 27,841. Hybrid-electric rose 10.6% to 46,292 from 41,838, and plug-in hybrid rose 4.6% to 12,716 from 12,162. Petrol collapsed 35.9% to 34,820 from 54,360, and diesel fell 32.5% to 3,302 from 4,891.

Full-year registrations rose 2.6% to 1,952,778 cars from 1,903,054. Battery-electric rose 21.4% to 381,970 from 314,687, while petrol fell 14.9% to 658,853 from 774,484. The flat month hid a shift from combustion to electric power.

1. Registrations: Count all new passenger cars registered in the calendar month, summed across fuel types with no weighting. The publisher states no seasonal adjustment.
2. Year-over-year change: Compare the month with the same month a year earlier as current minus prior divided by prior times 100. Round to one decimal with a plus or minus sign. A positive value means more registrations than a year earlier, and a negative value means fewer. For example, 140,786 against 141,092, a gap of 306 cars, gives minus 0.2%.
3. Year-to-date change and splits: Apply the same formula to January-to-month totals and separately within each fuel-type cell. Some manufacturer-share cells are estimated, while United Kingdom totals arrive through SMMT.