New motor vehicle registrations: Electric vehicles end year with increasing market share

Statistics Canada recently released new motor vehicle registration data for the fourth quarter of 2021 in the Daily.

There were 1,646,609 new motor vehicles registered in 2021, increasing 6.5% from 2020. New registrations of multipurpose vehicles, such as sports utility vehicles (SUVs) and crossovers, increased 16.8% in 2021 from 2020, comprising over half (55.6%) of all new registrations. New registrations of passenger cars also increased (+1.2% in 2021), while those of pickup trucks (-6.5%) and vans (-13.9%) declined compared with 2020.

Zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs) reached a new milestone in 2021, ending the year accounting for 6.2% of all new vehicle registrations in the fourth quarter. ZEVs comprised 5.2% of all new vehicles registered during 2021, a gain of 3 percentage points since 2018. Within this group, 68.3% of new ZEVs registered in 2021 were battery-electric vehicles (BEVs) and 31.7% were plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), both increasing sharply from 2020. Higher numbers of new hybrid electric vehicles (+91.4%), gasoline-powered vehicles (+2.2%) and diesel-powered vehicles (+1.7%) were also registered in 2021.

More detailed data are available as far back as the first quarter of 2017. You can make use of a Quarterly data visualization tool here.

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