Number of Cars in the UK 2025

Because cars are racking up fewer miles each year and able to stay on the road longer than ever before (the average age of cars in the UK has risen to 8.6 years old), there are more cars on the road now than ever before. Below we summarize UK car licensing statistics including car ownership for typical UK households.

How Many Cars are Registered in the UK?

According to NimbleFins analysis of data from the Department of Transport, there were 32,888,476 cars licensed in Great Britain at the end of Q2 2024 (and 33,935,937 in the UK). If you think roads are significantly more crowded now than there were a generation ago, you're absolutely right. Over the past 30 years, the number of cars in GB has risen 55%. If growth continues at the same pace, we could have 45 million cars on British roads by 2045.

Back in 2020 the number of cars dropped (by 0.6%)—while this is likely related to the pandemic, it is startling because looking back on 30 years worth of data, 2020 was the only year that the number of registered cars decreased.

The number of cars in Great Britain continues to rise steadily, except for a small drop in 2020

Average Number of Cars per Household UK

In 2023, households in England had an average of 1.20 cars. However if we exclude London (the area with the lowest rate of vehicle ownership) then the typical English household had 1.29 cars. In London, households had 0.73 cars, meaning on average not every household has a car. Households in the East have the highest rate of car ownership, with an average of 1.40 cars per household. (Note: "Cars" includes vans for this dataset.)

The biggest decrease in car ownership per household has occurred in London. In the 20 years from 2003 to 2023, the number of cars per household in London dropped 11%, from 0.82 to 0.73.

The biggest increase in car ownership per household was in the North East, where the number of cars per household grew 19% from 0.86 in 2003 to 1.02 in 2023.

The number of cars in English households

How Many Households Don't Have a Car?

In England overall, 22.4% of households don't have a car. This number is a bit skewed by London, where 42% of households have no car. If we consider households outside of London then 19% don't have a car. In other words, 1 in 5 households outside of London don't drive. The East, South West and South East have the highest rates of car ownership, with around 85% of households having at least one car or van in these areas.

Around 22% of households in England have no car or van

Households without a car generally rely on public transportation to get around, enabling them to save hundreds or thousands of pounds a year on car-related expenses like car insurance.

Note: for purposes of this section, references to "car" include both cars and vans.

Number of Cars by Fuel Type

By the end of June 2024, petrol and diesel cars still dominated British roads. In fact, 59% of cars on the road were petrol and 33% were diesel. In terms of real numbers, there were 19,259,147 petrol cars and 10,958,721 diesel cars registered in the UK in mid 2024. While the number of petrol cars has risen, there are 8% fewer diesel cars on the road now compared to two years ago (equivalent to just under 1 million cars).

How about electric or plug-in hybrid electric cars? In mid 2024 there were 6.5 million EVs in the UK, an 18X increase since 2014. In June 2024, 11% of cars in the UK were fully or partially fueled by electric power. Hybrid electrics are the most popular, with 1.7 million on the road in 2024, versus 1.1 million fully electric, zero em=mission cars.

FAQs

Source

Department for Transport