There are more than 40 MILLION vehicles in the UK

No wonder traffic’s (usually) awful. SMMT data has revealed that more than 40 MILLION vehicles are registered for use in the UK. That’s 35 million cars and 5 million vans, trucks, buses and other commercial vehicles.

Some takeaways: the most common car in the UK is the Ford Fiesta, with 1.61 million registered as of the end of 2019. Second is the Ford Focus, with 1.27 million registered, and third is the Vauxhall Corsa, of which there are 1.15 million on the road.

There are 7.12 million black cars in the UK, making it the most common colour before silver (6.38 million) and blue (6.07 million). Curiously most hybrids and EVs are painted white, though it’s only the fifth most popular colour overall.

Speaking of plug-ins, there are 26 per cent more low and zero-emissions vehicles on the road than this time last year. The vast majority of the more-than 750,000 cars are hybrids, but almost 150,000 are PHEVs and just over 90,000 are full EVs. Not bad, but that’s still just 2.2 per cent of the market. 39 per cent of UK cars are diesel (down 0.9 per cent), while petrol is up 1.2 per cent to 20.66 million cars. Still, average CO2 emissions are down -19.2 per cent since 2008.