With the petrol and diesel ban coming into effect in the UK from 2030, electric vehicles are rapidly becoming a reality of everyday life, rather than just a future prediction.
According to the latest figures from Next Green Car, the electric car market is growing quickly, with more than 215,000 pure-electric cars on UK roads at the end of February 2021, and over 455,000 plug-in models (including plug-in hybrids – PHEVs).
The past few years has seen a dramatic increase in the electric car market, with a 66% growth in electric vehicle registrations between 2019 and 2020, the biggest ever annual increase.
And, as this popularity continues to grow, we are inevitably seeing more electric vehicles entering the total loss arena.
“The growing popularity of EVs in the UK car parc has now reached a point where their presence is significant, and we are certainly seeing increasing numbers of accident damaged electric and hybrid vehicles coming through our online auctions, due to cost of repair and availability of parts.”
Phil Briggs, Director of Operation Centres, Transport & Engineering
As the numbers continue to grow and change, so does society’s pre-conceived perception of a typical EV owner. Consumers across the globe are becoming increasingly conscious about the environment, climate change, and the general welfare of the planet, and more and more people are determined to play their part by investing into low emission vehicles.
EV owners are no longer being perceived as a small niche buyer base, they are growing and diversifying, and by 2030 when new government legislation comes into effect to ban the sale of new petrol and diesel vehicles, a significant proportion of the UK will have made the switch to electric.
“The petrol and diesel bans are now less than a decade away, so we’re ahead of the curve when it comes to changes to assist our customers. Although there will still be a strong market for affordable, used petrol and diesel models, we are also going to see an increase in the number of electric vehicles entering the UK vehicle remarketing sector which is a great opportunity for our sellers and buyers alike.”
Mark Godfrey, Director of Strategy, Marketing & Automotive Division
As electric vehicles become a larger percentage of the overall mix of vehicles that our insurance customers handle, they will be looking towards Copart to provide our expertise for total loss decision making. The complexity of parts and specific requirements for safe handling means higher cost of repair for these types of vehicles, and insurers will need assistance in making the right decisions.
The good news for the major insurance companies that we work with, is that electric vehicles are not new to Copart and we have already been handling them for around eight years.
We’re proud to be one of the UK market leaders in electric vehicle handling and remarketing, and we have made significant investment into training engineers at our nationwide Operation Centres to work safely with EVs and hybrids. This means we can thoroughly and expertly assess these vehicles for insurers, to enable them to make confident and accurate total loss cost decisions.
“We have been competently handling electric and hybrid vehicles for many years, steadily adapting our processes and developing our skills, so that our engineers have the necessary expertise to work safely and competently with these vehicle types.”
Russ England, Engineering Services Manager
There are certainly some hurdles ahead before the UK can become fully electric. There is controversy around recent cuts to EV grants and much work still to be done in strengthening the charging infrastructure, but with the number of public charging points having made a dramatic increase of 220% between 2016 and 2020, it is clear that an electric future is now a certainty.
At Copart, we’re ready, and are staying ready, to support the changing demands in our industry as the electric vehicle market continues to develop and grow!
Keep up to date with our Autoblog over the next few weeks, as we tell you more about what we have achieved in this area so far, and keep you posted on further developments we have planned as we continue to grow our expertise in this exciting new technology.
References:
Admin (Zap-Map). (2021). EV Charging Stats 2021. Available: https://www.zap-map.com/statistics/. Last accessed 26th May 2021.
Lilly, C. (2021). Electric car market statistics. Available: https://www.nextgreencar.com/electric-cars/statistics/. Last accessed 26th May 2021.