The Tesla Model 3 has topped the UK new car registrations charts for the month of April, but in a month that has seen the number of new cars hitting UK roads decline to their lowest level since 1946.

Tesla registered 658 Model 3s last month, placing it ahead of the Jaguar I-Pace and ever-popular Vauxhall Corsa, in a UK new car market down 97 per cent compared with April 2019.

To put the Model 3’s April leading numbers into context, March’s most popular new model - the Ford Fiesta - led the previous set of figures with 6,687 registrations at the end of the month.

In 2nd place, Jaguar registered 367 I-Paces, meaning the top two spots in the UK were both occupied by luxury electric vehicles. While Vauxhall put 264 Corsas on the road.

Tesla’s success in what has been the hardest month for the UK car market since the post-war era can be partly attributed to its contactless delivery system. Tesla has delivered a large number of its vehicles directly to customers for some years now – but with its retailers shutting on 24 March, following government guidelines, the company switched to contactless handovers at the customer’s homes or at its delivery centres, while many other manufacturers have had to suspend UK operations.