UK SUV sales top 1 million in 2023

SUV sales in the UK have increased by 23 per cent since 2022, according to Transport & Environment analysis of Dataforce data. In 2022, the number of new SUVs (sports utility vehicles) registered stood at 910,000 but now that number has grown by a third and stands at 1.12 million. In 2021, 50 per cent of all new car registrations were SUVs. In 2022, that figure stood at 57 per cent. And in 2023, that rose again to 60 per cent. If the trend continues, in 2027 SUV registrations could make up 75 per cent of new registrations.

The vast majority of these SUVs (83%) are petrol and diesel cars, hybrids, or plug-in hybrids (PHEVs). In January 2024, Transport & Environment reported that cars across Europe and the UK are growing, on average, by 1cm every two years, with UK cars being wider than the European average.

Based on that finding, Transport & Environment (T&E) UK called on car companies to “prioritise smaller, more affordable electric cars and for the government to introduce weight-based taxes on the purchase of the heaviest new cars, as well as introducing a strict vehicle width limit to come into force by 2030.”

For his part, Ralph Palmer, UK electric vehicle and fleets officer at T&E, commented: “SUV sales in the UK growing by more than a third in just two years is a dangerous trend that could spell disaster for the UK’s carbon budgets. The stubbornly high levels of polluting SUV sales is not only negating emissions savings from the move to battery electric vehicles, it’s embedding a culture of large, luxury cars, which is simply unsustainable…”

However, the Dataforce data upon which T&E based its findings, also shows that, while UK motorists do have a predilection for SUVs, the volume of zero-emission Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV) registrations has increased substantially over the last three years. And the proportion of BEV registrations made up by SUVs is also markedly on the up. In other words, while the popularity and size of SUVs raises questions.

In the meantime, the numbers are good news for the tyre market. The data shows that, as new SUV demand increases, so SUV replacement tyre demand and – more specifically – EV SUV tyre demand will also increase over the next couple of years.