Vauxhall passes 100,000 electric sales, on course for its biggest year yet

Vauxhall has sold 102,852 electric vehicles in Britain, a total that passed 100,000 with a Grandland Electric 213PS Ultimate delivered by Drive Vauxhall in Nuneaton. The figures were published today and run to the end of October, which means the brand has added 2,852 electric vehicles since the milestone car changed hands.

The number is a cumulative count that starts with the Ampera in 2011, and the shape of the curve behind it is more interesting than the round figure. Of those 102,852 vehicles, 95.6 per cent were sold after the end of 2020, and 2026 is running at a faster average than any year before it.

The car that took the count past 100,000

The milestone vehicle was a Grandland Electric in Ultimate trim, the 213PS version, sold through Drive Vauxhall in Nuneaton. The Grandland finished third overall in the 2026 Auto Express Driver Power reliability survey and first among mid-size SUVs, a result Vauxhall attaches to the announcement.

It sits at the top of a range that now runs to eight electric cars: Corsa, Mokka, Astra, Astra Sports Tourer, Frontera, Grandland, Combo Life and Vivaro Life. Vauxhall says it offered an electric version of every passenger car it sold by the end of 2024, and electric versions of its vans since 2021. The Combo Electric is built at Ellesmere Port, which the company calls the UK's first electric-only volume car plant. The next all-new model, due in 2027, will be the first production Vauxhall to wear the redrawn Griffin badge shown on the STX Concept estate.

The car that took the count over the line is not the one that did the volume. That work was done further down the range, by two models that account for just under half the total.

Fifteen years, and 95.6 per cent of it since 2020

Vauxhall's breakdown table begins in 2011 with four Amperas. The Ampera was a range-extender rather than a battery-only car, and its early years were slow: 459 sales in 2012, 706 in 2013, 1,237 in 2014, then 1,346 and 1,348. Six years of selling electric Vauxhalls produced 1,344 cars.

The table then jumps from 2016 to 2020, when the cumulative total reached 4,487. The Corsa-e arrived in 2019 and the Mokka Electric in 2020, and the curve turned. The total reached 16,105 by the end of 2021, 32,475 by 2022, 51,018 by 2023, 69,338 by 2024, 86,344 by 2025 and 102,852 by October 2026. The first decade produced 4,487 of the 102,852. The five years since have produced the other 98,365.

For scale, the 15-year total is about 5.9 per cent of the 1,739,271 cars registered in Britain in the first nine months of 2026 alone, according to SMMT.

The pace picked up again this year

Vauxhall added 16,508 electric vehicles in the ten months to October, an average of 1,651 a month, or about 54 a day. That is the highest average of any year in the series. The whole of 2025 brought 17,006, an average of 1,417 a month, and 2024 brought 18,320.

At the 2026 rate the brand would end the year on roughly 106,000 cumulative sales, which would mean about 19,800 for the year and a new annual record, ahead of the 18,543 sold in 2023. That is arithmetic rather than a forecast, and the final two months of a year rarely match the average of the first ten.

The pricing behind the 2026 pace is unusual. Vauxhall sells the Frontera Electric at the same list price as the Frontera Hybrid, a claim it makes as a UK first, and the Astra's electrified versions share an on-the-road price across their trim levels. The Electric Car Grant then does the rest, although not at the top rate: every Vauxhall on our list of qualifying cars sits in the £1,500 band rather than the £3,750 one. With that discount applied, the Astra Electric costs less than the hybrid and plug-in hybrid versions.

A grant-assisted price is still part of a sales total. The milestone measures how many cars left showrooms, not how many would have at a higher price.

Two models carry just under half

The Mokka Electric has sold more than 26,000 since 2020 and the Corsa Electric more than 23,000 since the same year, according to Vauxhall. Between them they account for at least 49,000 of the 102,852, or 47.6 per cent.

The Corsa's reach is wider than its electric version. SMMT's year-to-date model table puts the Corsa fifth in Britain with 27,390 registrations to the end of September, behind the Ford Puma, Jaecoo 7, Kia Sportage and Nissan Qashqai. The electric version is a minority of a nameplate that remains one of the country's biggest.

What the milestone does not say

Vauxhall registered 70,491 cars in Britain in the first nine months of 2026, up 6.1 per cent on the same period last year. The market grew 10.2 per cent over the same stretch, so the brand's share fell from 4.21 per cent to 4.05 per cent. September was weaker still: 11,991 cars, down 1.1 per cent, and a 3.42 per cent share against 3.87 per cent a year earlier.

The wider market makes the electric count look stronger than the car count. Battery electric cars took 26.16 per cent of registrations in the first nine months, 454,947 in total, against the 33 per cent the zero emission vehicle mandate requires this year, as SMMT reported in October. The mandate's later targets are under review as well, with reports in October pointing to 60 per cent by 2030 rather than 80 per cent. A brand with a full electric range and level pricing ought to be gaining ground in that market. Vauxhall is on course to sell more electric vehicles this year than it did in 2025, and it holds a smaller share of all cars than it had a year ago.

The 102,852 carries two footnotes as well. It counts the Ampera, a car with a petrol engine on board, as an electric vehicle, and the series skips 2017 to 2019, so the line from 1,348 to 4,487 covers four years in a single step. Neither point undermines the total. Both are worth knowing when a manufacturer chooses the number that makes the best headline.

What Vauxhall has shown is that a mainstream brand can sell electric cars in six figures in Britain when the electric version is priced against the petrol one. What it has not shown is whether that pace survives the grant, or whether it can hold share while the rest of the market grows faster.

Sources

• Vauxhall: Vauxhall surpasses 100,000 EV sales milestone, 4 November 2026. Link
• SMMT: UK new car registration data, September 2026 (published 5 October 2026). Link
• SMMT: Record electric car market powers bumper September, 5 October 2026. Link
• GOV.UK: Zero emission vehicles eligible for a grant, cars (accessed 4 November 2026). Link
• EV Powered: Vauxhall hits 100,000 EV sales landmark, 4 November 2026. Link
• Motor Trader: Vauxhall sells 100,000th EV seven years after Corsa-e launch, 4 November 2026. Link