- Audi sales plunge continues
- Market year-to-date up 2.4% to 1.18 million units as 2025 outlook revised upwards to 1.9 million
- July new car market declines -5.0% following two months of growth.
- Battery electric vehicle registrations rise again but growth moderates to 9.1% as full Electric Car Grant eligibility urgently needed says SMMT
AUDI, once the business driver’s car of choice, is now the fastest falling brand with a drop of more than 12,000 units so far this year. This equates to a drop of 16.7% on an overall market that’s up 2.4%.
Two years ago Audi’s market share was 7.2%. A year ago, Audi had a 6.5% share and it’s now running at 5.3% after the first seven months of 2025.
Audi’s decline is not simple and not about a single issue.
The brand is facing a host of problems. Retailers have reported to Broker News that customers are confused by the change in naming strategy where odd numbers would be used for EVs and even numbers for combustion engine cars. While this has now been abandoned, its legacy remains.
Demand for high cost electric cars – of which Audi has many – is not as strong as expected, particularly outside the fleet market.
Pressure from both new entrant brands and rivals is at a record high.
Interestingly, Audi does not appear to have resorted to pushing cars into higher cost fleet channels. With a fleet mix of 57%, that’s on a par with Mercedes and below that of BMW and Volvo (which has a fleet mix of 71%).
With so many factors at play, a solution is unlikely to arrive quickly.
Electric Car Grant causes market confusion
The overall market was down 5% in the latest July new car registration figures, pulling the year-to-date growth to 2.4%.
July and August are always smaller volume months and, as such, subject to greater swings. However, several commentators blamed confusion over the government’s Electric Car Grant which was announced mid-July. With little clarity over which cars and brands would qualify for the discounts on EVs priced at less than £37,000, consumers in this category paused their acquisition intentions.
Several brands launched their own equivalent of an Electric Car Grant discount which helped counter consumer reticence.
Stellantis’s Leapmotor was first to offer a discount and benefited from the action. One Leapmotor retailer told Broker News that the offer, which amounted to a £125 deposit and monthly payments of £125 on the C10 SUV (pictured above), was supposed to be running for a full quarter, but was so successful that it was closed sooner than expected – no doubt once the RVs were revised.
Leapmotor registered 248 cars in July, a quarter of its year-total of 790 units.
However, these offers didn’t work for all brands. MG, which was similarly quick to offer an Electric Car Grant-equivalent of £1,500 off the MG4 and MG S5 saw a fall of nearly 600 cars in July over the same time last year. MG is now running down more than 2,000 cars year-to-date.
The Tesla question
June saw Tesla recover much of its sales drop for 2025, July saw it fall back down, which will again raise the question over Elon Musk’s political actions and their impact on the brand.
July saw Tesla register just 987 cars (a market share of 0.7%), down 60% on the same month last year. Year-to-date the US EV brand is down more than 1,700 units with a market share of 2% compared to 2.2% a year ago.
However, with Tesla’s UK registrations often impacted by deliveries rather than orders it won’t become fully clear what the situation is until we see the September numbers.
Which brands made the running in July?
After a couple of years of poor car sales, Ford is starting to see fortunes turn. New product in the form of the electric Puma, as well as significant attractive leasing offers on the Explorer and Capri, have seen the brand begin to recover. Ford is up 5,000 units so far this year and is more than one percentage point up in market share for July at 6.5%.
BYD continues to be the UK’s fastest growing brand this year in terms of units, up 18,902 cars, however, if the twin brands of Jaecoo and Omoda are combined their total increase is 19,129 cars.
Peugeot’s increase of more than 15,500 cars year-to-date is impressive. However, this is entirely dominated by fleet registrations. The brand increase is keeping the overall Stellantis group in positive territory, up 10,875 cars this year.
Figures exclusive to Auto Market Insight magazine show that in July, Peugeot’s fleet mix was 83%, the highest of any of the top 15 brands. The next nearest fleet mix was 74% from Skoda.
At the other end of the scale, and still with Stellantis, Citroen is having a poor year. It’s the fourth fastest faller year-to-date and is down 40% this year.
Top 5 fastest growing brands YTD
Bottom 5 fastest shrinking brands YTD*
1 BYD 18,902
2 Peugeot 15,553
3 Jaecoo 10,314
4 Volkswagen 10,010
5 Omoda 8,815
5 Toyota -6,443
4 Citroen -7,238
3 Nissan -7,588
2 SEAT -10,748
1 Audi -12,469
* Jaguar would be in this list, but we’ve excluded it as technically it’s left the market.
Digging below the July stats
- MINI’s reported early teething issues over the switch to agency seem to have been resolved. July saw the brand up almost 50% for the month. It’s also up nearly 10% for the year.
- BYD vs Omoda Jaecoo: BYD is still ahead year-to-date of rival Chery brands Jaecoo and Omoda with a 1.9% market share (the twin brands have a combined 1.6%). However, in July, Omoda Jaecoo took 2.7% of the market against BYD’s 2.3%.
- The following brands sold more cars than DS and Abarth combined, in July: Maserati, Bentley, Genesis, Subaru and Ineos.
- Skywell, a new Chinese brand, which has an Electric Car Grant-style discount of £3,750 in place, registered five cars in July.
Stats for new cars in July 2025
Source: SMMT
Read our analysis of June new car registrations
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Tristan Young is an award winning journalist with more than 25 years’ experience reporting on the automotive industry focussing predominantly on fleet and retail. As a self-confessed petrol-head, Tristan has a weakness for car classifieds. When he’s not writing about the automotive industry, he can usually be found outdoors with a small pack of border collies.
