Battery-electric cars took 32% of new-car registrations in the United Kingdom in October, while petrol slipped to 37.2%, the closest the two have ever been in the monthly figures. The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders counted 48,858 battery-electric registrations, up 32.7% on a year earlier, in a market of 152,730 new cars.
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Petrol at 37.2% and electric at 32%: the October scoreboard
Plug-in hybrids added 22,898 registrations, up 30.1%, while petrol fell 11.6% to 56,876 cars. Diesel dropped 15.9% and conventional hybrids slipped 5%. Overall registrations rose 5.4%, the eleventh consecutive month of growth for the market as a whole, so the electric gain did not come from a shrinking pool of buyers. Set side by side, the 56,876 petrol cars exceed the 48,858 battery-electric ones by 8,018, yet adding plug-in hybrids to the electric side gives 71,756 plug-in cars, more than petrol’s total.
Fred Lambert of Electrek, who analyzed the SMMT data, traced how quickly the gap has closed. In March 2024 petrol held 55.9% of the market and battery-electric cars 15.2%. Across the first ten months of 2026, battery-electric registrations reached 503,805, up 30.4%, for a 26.6% share, while petrol’s share for the period fell to 41.1% from 47.2% at the same point in 2025. Lambert’s linear trend has petrol losing about 0.5 points a month and electric gaining about 0.36, which would put them level near 33% each around August 2027. A straight-line projection of that kind smooths over the December spikes described below.
The monthly numbers swing hard. September 2026 produced a record 99,199 battery-electric registrations, so October’s 48,858 is a much smaller volume even though its share is high.
Chinese brands and the Skoda Enyaq lead the charts
Brand data shows where the growth is coming from. BYD registered 6,065 cars, up 73%. Jaecoo reached 6,089, more than double a year earlier, Chery 3,707, nearly triple, and Leapmotor 1,773, double, while MG rose 85%. The best-selling battery-electric model was the Skoda Enyaq with 1,568 units, followed by the Mini Countryman on 1,494 and the Jaecoo 5 on 1,465. Those three models sold 4,527 cars together. BYD, Jaecoo, Chery, Leapmotor and MG, all Chinese-owned, supplied the fastest-growing names in the October data.
Tesla went the other way, registering 282 cars against 511 a year earlier, a fall of 45%, and no Tesla model made the October top 10 list of battery-electric cars. Those 282 registrations were under 0.6% of the month’s battery-electric total. Year to date the brand is still up 31% at 46,526 units, so October sits against a stronger ten-month record. SMMT credits part of the volume to manufacturer discounts, 0% finance, deposit contributions and subsidized charging, alongside the government’s Electric Car Grant.
The ZEV Mandate gap that SMMT keeps pointing to
The Zero Emission Vehicle Mandate sets sales targets of 33% for 2026, 38% for 2027 and 52% for 2028. SMMT’s November outlook forecasts 27.2%, 32% and 37.5% for those years, a 14.5-point shortfall in 2028. The gap is 5.8 points in 2026 and 6 points in 2027, so it widens sharply in the final year. Mike Hawes, SMMT’s chief executive, put the industry case bluntly: “Higher targets may force supply, but they do not create demand.” The trade body wants the government to cut the targets again.
Ministers have already opened a review of the mandate, and the Budget confirmed a new EV-specific road tax, called eVED, from 2028 while leaving 20% VAT on public charging. Lambert argues those two measures threaten demand more than the targets do, and he rejects SMMT’s “demand gap” framing, pointing to petrol shrinking every month. With the mandate under review, manufacturers are planning 2027 and 2028 volumes without knowing whether the targets will stay at 38% and 52%.
Classification matters too. On a stricter reading that counts mild hybrids with hybrids rather than petrol, battery-electric cars already outsold every other powertrain in August 2026. Combustion-only share, with mild hybrids included in that bucket, has fallen from 72.5% in 2021 to 45.5% so far in 2026. The definitions explain why the same month can be described as petrol still leading or as electric already ahead, and why SMMT and Electrek draw different conclusions from identical registrations.
December will be the test. Battery-electric share jumped in each recent December as makers pushed volume toward mandate targets, reaching 31.0% in December 2024 and 32.2% in December 2025, when petrol held 39.4%. Electrek estimates about 37% electric and 32% petrol for December 2026, yet SMMT’s 27.2% full-year forecast implies roughly 31% for November and December combined, a much closer race. The next release on SMMT’s registration data pages will show which reading is right. Reader pushback on Electrek’s post shows how contested the numbers are: a top-voted comment argued that SMMT is not neutral and that the mandate measures emissions reduction rather than pure battery sales, though the comment’s claims are unverified. Diesel’s 15.9% drop and petrol’s 11.6% fall, set against a market that grew 5.4%, also mean combustion-only registrations are shrinking faster than the overall market is expanding.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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