Geographic skew in electric vehicle statistics
Context
In UK Department for Transport (DfT) published statistics, ‘Keepership’ refers to the registered keeper of the vehicle, which might not be the owner.
DfT notes:
- “Vehicles are allocated to a local authority according to the postcode of the registered keeper. This is the keeper's address for privately owned vehicles or the company's registered address for company owned vehicles. The address does not necessarily reflect where the vehicle is located. This is especially true for large fleets kept by companies involved with vehicle management, leasing or rentals.”
- “Significant changes in the number of vehicles from year to year can often occur when companies change their registered address.” (DfT VEH0142, April 2026)
The UK Driver Vehicle and Licensing Agency (DVLA) records and reports statistics on the keepership address, however the registered address provided to DVLA may not be where the vehicle is ultimately kept. In particular, company keepership is frequently registered at an address other than where the vehicle is used e.g. a finance brokers address, or company HQ.
This effect is particularly evident with newly manufactured vehicles, which are significantly more likely to be registered under company keepership than older vehicles. The rise in proportion of company keepership registrations as a result of new finance products in the car lease market has led to an increasing distortion in the reported geographic allocation of vehicles in recent years.
As the geographic registration of company keepership vehicles has become incrementally less reliable to determine accurate uptake of new vehicles by location of use, an exploration of the extent to which this could be distorting official statistics reported for Scotland’s vehicle keepership became necessary.
A method to recalibrate the effect of geographic skew in the reported location of vehicle registration has been developed to provide better insight into the prevalence of vehicle ownership by respective fuel types for both new vehicle sales and total vehicle stock in Scotland.
Aims and objectives
The intended outputs from this report:
- Provide a better means of determining real-world electric vehicle uptake in Scotland.
- Develop methodology that can be shared with key stakeholders who model emissions using national statistics including DfT, Devolved Governments and the Climate Change Committee.
- Demonstrate how this methodology impacts the total number of vehicles of all fuel types in Scotland.
- Consider the impact on the total carbon footprint for the car and van sectors in Scotland, and their respective emissions trajectories.
Company vehicle keepership
Table 1 – Percentage of new vehicles recorded as company cars in 2025:
|
Petrol |
Diesel |
Hybrid electric (petrol) |
Hybrid electric (diesel) |
Plug-in hybrid electric (petrol) |
Plug-in hybrid electric (diesel) |
Battery Electric Vehicle |
All fuel types |
|
56.59% |
64.01% |
55.61% |
43.28% |
72.97% |
84.53% |
78.10% |
63.28% |
(DfT statistics VEH1153a, vehicles registered for the first time, published April 2026)
Most newly registered vehicles in the UK (63.28%) were registered as company cars in 2025. The percentage of plug-in hybrid vehicles (PHEVs) and battery electric vehicles (BEVs) registered as company keepership is higher, at 72.97% and 78.10% respectively.
This is, in part due to the company car taxation system currently favouring both PHEV and BEV vehicles. It is also due to the relatively recent rise of individual lease products popular with plug-in vehicle drivers that register keepership with a company rather than that of the vehicle user even where this is used as a private vehicle.
There are also differences in the taxation system in Scotland that could lead to some businesses choosing to register a vehicle at an office or address in England to obtain tax advantages for the vehicle user.
PHEVs are particularly likely to be registered as company vehicles when compared to other fuel types. This high percentage of company vehicles is consistently between 70% and 85% each year for the past 10 years (yellow line).
The rate of company keepership for BEVs varies to a greater degree by age of vehicle, with older BEVs in the UK significantly more likely to be privately owned than newer BEVs (red line).
(DfT statistics VEH1153a, April 2026)
The percentages of company keepership for plug-in vehicles are substantially higher than that of even diesel cars (60% to 70%) which are traditionally adopted by businesses due to beneficial tax structures that this enabled.
Electric vehicle keepership in Scotland
In recent years, DfT statistics have reported Scotland as having a lower proportion of BEV new car registrations compared to the UK average.
According to DfT licenced vehicle data for Scotland, the percentage of BEVs first registered in 2025 and licenced at the end of 2025 was 14.2%, and 8.8% for PHEVs.
In contrast, the percentage of electric cars first registered over the same period across the UK was higher, with 23.4% for BEVs and 10.9% for PHEVs.
Table 2 – percentage of BEV registrations:
|
2025 |
Scotland |
UK |
|
New BEV car registrations |
14.2% |
23.4% |
|
New PHEV car registrations |
8.8% |
10.9% |
|
New BEV van registrations |
4.8% |
9.2% |
|
New PHEV van registrations |
2.3% |
3.0% |
The difference in these statistics for Scotland and UK is likely to be primarily due to geographical skews in the registration of the location of vehicle user rather than significant differences in relative uptake of electric vehicles.
Personal contract hire and Business contract hire has emerged in recent years as a popular means of ordering a new electric vehicle in the UK. With this financing model, the purchaser does not necessarily own the vehicle at any point, as the vehicle is leased from an intermediary who is ordinarily not the manufacturer. The vehicle is typically registered with DVLA at the brokers address rather than the address where the vehicle is kept.
This means that the location of the first vehicle registration in DVLA records can increasingly reflect the address of the leasing company rather than that of the vehicle keeper.
Vehicle finance brokers are concentrated in half a dozen key locations in England, notably the North West, South West and South East of England, the result being that vehicles are disproportionately likely to be registered in these regions in England rather than other regions of England, or Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland.
The degree of skew in the geographic allocation of vehicles has increased in recent years and has become significant because of the volume of new vehicles that are registered with company keepership status.
Company keepership encompassed over 63% of all cars first registered in 2025 and licenced in Dec 2025, and over 78% of battery electric cars. For vans, company keepership was 92% overall for vans, and 98% of all battery electric vans.
The above heat maps of BEV car registrations contrast the much greater geographic variation by region in BEV uptake for company keepership versus that of private keepership.
The company keepership chart (left) disproportionately reflects the addresses of main vehicle brokers in Renfrewshire and Stirlingshire. Although these dealerships may appear dominant on a Scotland wide scale, the volumes of vehicles registered are low when placed beside the sales of major vehicle broker hubs in England.
Geographic records of BEV uptake can be seen to be skewed towards the headquarters of leasing agents, with the main agents based in key towns/cities such as Stockport, Windsor, Milton Keynes and Peterborough. Remarkably, there are more BEVs registered in Stockport than there are households. This is because the company headquarters of a major car leasing agent is based in Stockport, and leasing products offered for UK car orders can result the keeper being registered in Stockport.
The private keepership chart (right) is by contrast more evenly distributed geographically and provides a better indicator as to relative levels of BEV uptake in the four Nations.
Vehicle data sources
The primary source for vehicle data in the UK is the Department for Transport's vehicle statistics. VEH9901 for licenced road-using vehicles, and VEH1153a registration statistics are the key sources of data when seeking when vehicles are first registered and comparing to historical data. The two diverge because not every vehicle that is first registered remains licensed and active on UK roads.
However, there are discrepancies between the two databases. For example, for BEV cars VEH9901 licensing statistics shows the number of first registered in 2025 as 458,671 in the UK (as licenced at end Dec 2025), while VEH1153a registration statistics shows the number of BEV cars first registered in 2025 as being 473,225 in the UK.
The 3.2% difference (14,554 cars) is principally explained by the following:
- Vehicles that are not licenced i.e. not paid VED due to being between owners or SORN.
- Exported vehicles.
- Write-offs.
- Stolen vehicles.
- The VEH9901 licensing road using vehicle database also excludes vehicles that do not have a keeper type, and those that cannot be allocated to a specific local authority due to the postcode being incomplete or invalid.
In addition, there will be vehicles imported to the UK that will serve to increase the total number of vehicles first registered and licenced in a particular year.
Whilst DfT vehicle registration statistics VEH1153a is a useful indicator for the total number of vehicles first registered each year, the total numbers of licenced vehicles on the road will become increasingly divergent over time due to vehicles being written off and exported etc. From a geographic allocation perspective, vehicles can also be sold on and move freely between areas within the UK. As a result, licensing data relating to vehicle location is likely to be more accurate with older vehicles due to the lower incidence of company keepership.
It is still possible however that even with older vehicles that some of these vehicles can be recorded with the DVLA (in other datasets) as registered in one country, region or town yet kept in another.
DfT’s vehicle statistics VEH9901 provides a better indication of licenced road using vehicles, and this dataset is updated several times per year. For these reasons VEH9901 has been adopted in the geographic adjustment methodology described as the best indicator of the number of road using vehicles by fuel type.