UK EV sales surge 36% to record high in September

UK EV sales hit a new all-time record in September. The country registered 99,199 battery-electric cars last month, up 36.3% from a year ago and good for 28.3% of the market, according to preliminary data released today by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT).

Tesla’s Model 3 was the best-selling EV and the second best-selling car overall. And yet the auto industry’s own lobby group is using the record month to argue that the UK’s EV targets are too hard.

Plug-ins are carrying the UK car market

September is a big month in the UK. It’s one of the two months a year when new license plates come out, and it usually accounts for about one in seven of the year’s registrations.

This one was the best September since 2017, with 350,518 new cars registered, up 12.1%.

All of that growth came with a plug. The total market added 37,725 cars compared to last September. Battery-electric cars added 26,424 on their own, and plug-in hybrids added another 21,302 as they jumped 55.7% to a record 59,563 units and a record 17% share.

Petrol cars and conventional hybrids went backward.

Here’s the breakdown by powertrain from the SMMT’s data:

Add battery-electric cars and plug-in hybrids together and you get 158,762 cars with a plug, or 45.3% of the market. Petrol cars came in at 131,861, and their share fell from 45.2% to 37.6% in a single year.

Private buyers showed up too. Private registrations across all powertrains rose 13.9%, faster than fleets at 9.6%.

Tesla Model 3 leads, Chinese brands pile in

Tesla’s Model 3 was the best-selling EV in the UK in September with 9,929 units, which also made it the #2 car in the country regardless of powertrain. Not bad for a sedan in an SUV market. The Model Y added 5,946 units, good for fifth place overall.

That’s 15,875 cars from two models, or 16% of all EVs registered in the month. The cheaper Model 3 made-in-China is proving highly popular.

For context, Tesla registered 12,403 cars in the UK in June, its previous end-of-quarter push. Tesla always loads its deliveries into the last month of a quarter, and it shows here: 42% of the Model 3’s 23,704 UK registrations this year happened in September.

BYD took the next two spots among EVs with the Sealion 7 at 3,191 units and the Seal at 3,184, just ahead of the Kia EV3 at 3,026. Leapmotor’s B10 made the top 10 with 1,883 units. BYD wasn’t eligible for the UK’s Electric Car Grant when it launched last year, and it’s selling anyway.

The best-selling car in the UK in its biggest month of the year was the Jaecoo 7, a Chery SUV sold with petrol and plug-in hybrid powertrains, at 10,813 units. It’s now second for the year behind the Ford Puma.

The 33% target needs a 60% fourth quarter

Through nine months, the UK has registered 454,945 EVs, up 30.2%, for a 26.2% share of 1,739,253 new cars.

The ZEV mandate’s headline target for 2026 is 33%, up from 28% last year. The SMMT says hitting it would take another 265,000 EV registrations in the fourth quarter, based on its full-year forecast of 2.183 million cars.

We ran the math on that. The forecast leaves about 444,000 cars to be registered between October and December, so EVs would need roughly 60% of the market for three straight months. That’s not going to happen.

But automakers don’t have to hit it with EV sales alone. The mandate lets them earn credits for cutting CO2 on their non-electric cars, borrow from future years, and buy credits from other automakers. New AutoMotive puts the “real” 2026 target at 24.6% once those are counted, as we reported last month. At 26.2%, the market is already above it.

SMMT chief executive Mike Hawes credited more model choice and high fuel prices for the record, then turned to the government’s review of the mandate. He said that “the UK still has the world’s toughest targets and highest energy costs.”

The SMMT wants the rules brought closer in line with what it sees as actual demand.

Electrek’s Take

We’ve read this press release before. The SMMT announces a record EV month, then spends the second half explaining why the policy behind the record needs to be loosened.

The mandate is working. Automakers have to sell EVs in the UK, so they brought the cars: 178 electric models are now on sale, more than double the count in 2023, per the SMMT, and about twice what’s available in the US. They’re discounting them, and the government is chipping in with a grant. Buyers responded with 99,199 registrations in a month.

The 33% number makes for a scary chart, but the flexibilities exist so that automakers aren’t fined over the gap between 26.2% and 33%.

Hawes has a point on energy costs. Expensive electricity hurts the case for EVs, and that’s something the government can fix. It’s also a completely different ask than weakening the targets.

What we’d watch is plug-in hybrids. They grew faster than EVs in September, and September’s best-selling car is a Chinese SUV available as a PHEV. If the review ends up giving automakers more credit for PHEVs, expect a lot more of them and slower EV growth.

For our readers in the US, this is what a market with real competition looks like: Tesla, BYD, Kia, Skoda, Volvo, Mercedes and Leapmotor in the same top 10, and EVs at 28% of sales. Compare to, check notes, 8% in the US.

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