The number of business contract hire cars on BVRLA members’ lease fleets fell by 9.7% year-on-year in Q2 of 2020, the largest fall on record.
The newly-published figures are from the BVRLA’s latest Quarterly Leasing Survey, which showed a total of 793,171 business contract hire cars now on fleet.
The steep decline has been attributed by the BVRLA to disruption caused by the Covid-19 pandemic during the survey period.
The business contract hire figure was in contrast to that for personal contract hire, which saw a 5.7% increase during the same period, although the BVRLA said this was the slowest growth rate yet recorded for that particular segment.
Overall the BVRLA’s lease car fleet was down by 5.2% year-on-year, in contrast to LCVs which were up by 2.1%.
The overall BVRLA member fleet at the end of Q2, excluding all rental and PCP vehicles, totalled 2,532,972, with 83% being cars.
In perhaps more positive news, the number of battery electric vehicles on the BVRLA fleet was up by 1.8% year-on-year, while new EV registrations were up by 5.5% compared with the same period last year.
This contributed to the average CO2 emissions for BVRLA members’ new car registrations dropping from 109g/km in Q1 to 107g/km in Q2 – compared with an overall UK fleet figure of 115g/km – while average CO2 emissions across their car fleets fells from 112g/km to 111.3g/km in the same period.
New business contract hire emissions in Q2 were particularly strong, at 96g/km on average, compared with 130g/km for personal contract hire.
Petrol was the most common fuel type for BVRLA members’ new car registrations in Q2, at 46%, ahead of diesel with 34% and hybrids with 14%.
Diesel still accounts for 51% of the overall BVRLA car fleet, ahead of petrol on 34%, hybrids on 13%, and EVs on 2%.
The survey also asked BVRLA members about their confidence in both the wider UK economy and the fleet leasing sector, and found both were at their lowest levels since 2013.