Registration Share Versus Incentive Intensity

The contrast between BEV registration share and incentive allocation in 2025 highlights a clear imbalance in support intensity across powertrains. While BEVs accounted for just under a quarter of new car registrations, they absorbed more than 40% of total incentive spend, reflecting the level of intervention required to sustain electric volumes.

By contrast, petrol vehicles maintained the largest share of registrations while attracting a materially smaller proportion of incentive investment. Hybrid and plug-in hybrid vehicles occupied an intermediate position, with support levels broadly aligned to their market presence.

This divergence has implications beyond EV positioning alone. As incentive investment has increasingly been concentrated on electrified powertrains, the relative absence of support on petrol vehicles places upward pressure on effective transaction prices and monthly payments in the ICE market. In this context, part of the observed convergence between EV and ICE affordability reflects not only improving EV propositions but also reduced pricing intervention on conventional powertrains.

The resulting parity therefore emerges from a combination of EV support and ICE normalisation, rather than from EV-side intervention in isolation.