EV sales jump 32.7% as carmakers lobby to soften UK targets

Electric cars just had their biggest slice of the UK market this year. Nearly one in three new cars registered in October was fully electric, with registrations up 32.7 per cent on the same month last year, according to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders. That works out to a 32 per cent market share for pure EVs.

The running total tells the same story. More than half a million new electric cars have been registered so far in 2026, hitting 503,805 — a rise of 30.4 per cent on a year earlier. Buyers can now pick from over 180 fully electric models with an average range above 300 miles, the SMMT says.

The deals are doing a lot of the heavy lifting. Showroom offers stretch from price cuts and deposit help to interest-free finance, subsidised charging and free wall boxes, with the government's Electric Car Grant chipping in too. The SMMT says manufacturers are burning billions on those incentives to drag registrations closer to the targets set by the Zero Emission Vehicle Mandate.

They still aren't close enough. EVs made up 26.6 per cent of registrations across the first ten months of the year, and the SMMT forecasts 27.2 per cent for 2026 overall — short of the 33 per cent mandate target. It expects a 32 per cent share next year against a 38 per cent target, and 37.5 per cent by 2028 against 52 per cent. That last gap of 14.5 percentage points is more than double this year's projected shortfall, and it lands just as a new EV-only tax arrives.

SMMT chief executive Mike Hawes didn't mince words. He called the October figure great progress that comes at enormous cost, warning the support can't last forever while the gap to mandated targets more than doubles by 2028. Higher targets may force supply, he said, but they do not create demand — and he wants the ZEV Mandate review to deliver reform that takes effect immediately.

Not everyone wants the goalposts shifted. Melanie Lane, chief executive of charging company Pod, said sales are now ahead of the real ZEV sales target, proving the mandate is working as intended and needs no adjustment. She argued that cost, choice and easy charging are what actually drive the switch, and that another regulatory move is the last thing the market needs. The SMMT, meanwhile, is pushing for long-term certainty on grants and cheaper public charging, and warns heavy discounting squeezes profits and trade-in values. The wider market grew for an 11th straight month, with 152,730 new cars registered in October, up 5.4 per cent — and plug-in hybrids and EVs accounted for all of that gain.