A car declared SORN is off the road but not scrapped. It is the closest thing in public data to “nobody wants this car any more” — and electric cars reach that point sooner than petrol ones.
At the same registration year, electric cars are declared SORN two to three times as often as the petrol hatchbacks they compete with. This is not an age effect — every row below compares cars first registered in the same year.
| Registered | Electric cars on the road | Electric SORN | Petrol SORN | Ratio |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2014 | 4,202 | 6.4% | 3.1% | 2.1× |
| 2015 | 6,674 | 6.1% | 2.1% | 2.9× |
| 2016 | 7,324 | 4.0% | 1.8% | 2.2× |
| 2017 | 9,946 | 2.9% | 1.6% | 1.8× |
| 2018 | 10,003 | 3.8% | 1.2% | 3.2× |
| 2019 | 23,499 | 2.0% | 0.9% | 2.2× |
| 2020 | 56,877 | 1.7% | 0.7% | 2.4× |
| 2021 | 86,864 | 1.2% | 0.7% | 1.7× |
| 2022 | 135,571 | 1.0% | 0.5% | 2.0× |
| 2023 | 148,544 | 0.4% | 0.9% | 0.4× |
| 2024 | 160,362 | 0.3% | 0.6% | 0.5× |
| 2025 | 133,411 | 0.6% | 1.3% | 0.5× |
The newest three years run the other way. A 2023, 2024 or 2025 electric car is SORN’d less than its petrol equivalent. They are nearly new, mostly on finance, and being driven. The gap only opens on older cars, which is exactly where a used buyer is looking.
SORN is not proof of a dead battery. A car can be off the road because it is between owners, awaiting repair, or laid up over winter. What the figures show is that older electric cars reach that state more often than petrol ones — not why.
We can only count nameplates that are sold electric-only. DVLA’s table carries no fuel column, so a Corsa or a Golf cannot be split into petrol and electric versions here. Mixed nameplates are excluded rather than guessed at.
DVLA vehicle licensing statistics, table VEH0124, published 15 July 2026, under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Cars only. Grouped by year first used, so both sides of every comparison are the same age.
SORN percentage is vehicles declared SORN divided by all vehicles of that model and year, licensed or SORN. The petrol benchmark is the Ford Fiesta, Vauxhall Corsa, Volkswagen Golf and Ford Focus combined. Nothing is published off fewer than 2,000 vehicles.
Found an error? Tell us and we will publish the correction.