{"id":55582,"date":"2026-03-06T13:29:06","date_gmt":"2026-03-06T13:29:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bodyshopmag.com\/?p=55582"},"modified":"2026-03-06T13:32:05","modified_gmt":"2026-03-06T13:32:05","slug":"new-car-sales-hit-22-year-high-in-february","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bodyshopmag.com\/2026\/news\/new-car-sales-hit-22-year-high-in-february\/","title":{"rendered":"New car sales hit 22-year high in February"},"content":{"rendered":"

New car sales<\/a> rose by 7.2% in February to 90,100 registrations, according to new figures<\/a> from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT).<\/p>\n

This makes it the highest February volume in 22 years.<\/p>\n

Growth was driven by a 17.6% rise in private sales to 35,227 units, while fleets remained the largest source of new car registrations, accounting for 59.4% of the market.<\/p>\n

Battery electric vehicle uptake<\/a> rose 2.8% to 21,840 units. However, its share of the market fell for the second month in a row to 24.2%. Year-to-date, electric vehicles sales have made up 22% of the market.<\/p>\n

Plug-in hybrids were up 43.5% to claim an 11.6% market share, while hybrid electric registrations rose 3.3% to a 13.1% share.\u00a0Petrol demand grew by 5.2% but share slipped to 46.5%, while diesel volumes were down 3.8% to just 4.5% of the market.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Market recovering<\/h2>\n

Mike Hawes, SMMT chief executive, said: \u201cThe UK\u2019s new car market is continuing to recover and EV volumes are growing too, even if market share remains disappointing.<\/p>\n

“All eyes are now on \u2018new plate\u2019 March, which typically sets the tone for the year \u2013 and given sales of new pure petrol and diesel cars are currently required to end in less than four years, EV uptake must accelerate rapidly.<\/p>\n

“Manufacturers have committed monumental investment to drive demand but such costs cannot be sustained indefinitely, making a review of the transition an urgent priority to ensure ambition matches natural demand.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New car sales rose by 7.2% in February to 90,100 registrations, according to new figures from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT). This makes it the highest February […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":39606,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[145,1514,173],"class_list":["post-55582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-car-sales","tag-electric-vehicles","tag-smmt"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bodyshopmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bodyshopmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bodyshopmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bodyshopmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bodyshopmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55582"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bodyshopmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55582\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55584,"href":"https:\/\/www.bodyshopmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55582\/revisions\/55584"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bodyshopmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bodyshopmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bodyshopmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bodyshopmag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}