SMMT new car sales data for May: comment

“Sales of EVs were already rising, but President Trumps’s conflict with Iran has driven up prices at the pump with drivers voting with their feet, accelerating a shift away from volatile oil markets and saving hundreds, even thousands of pounds, a year in the process. This is the transition to net zero emissions in action.
 
“Autotrader has confirmed both new [2] and second hand EVs [3] are now cheaper to buy on average than petrol cars. With manufacturers competing to secure the sales they need to hit their ZEV mandate sales targets, sticker prices have been driven down.
 
“Calls from parts of the industry to weaken the mandate could see prices bounce back up, leaving families stuck paying more at the pump, and slow the supply of EVs to the second hand market where most of us buy our cars. Sticking with the targets will not only help with the cost of living, it will improve the UK’s energy security by lowering our dependency on foreign oil imports, with electric cars increasingly powered by electricity generated in British wind and solar farms."
 
Claims that the car industry is mandated to hit 33% new EV sales in 2026 are false. Flexibilities in the mandate, such as those that allow credits to be earned through the sale of petrol, diesel and hybrids vehicles that emit comparatively low levels of CO2, have the effect of lowering the car industry's headline EV sales target. It has been calculated by New Automotive that this means the real EV sales target for the car industry 2026 is 24.6%, [4] rather than 33%. With market share for the year so far at 24%, and sales in May at 27%, the car industry is on course to comply with its EV sales target for 2026, just as it did in 2024 [5] and 2025 [6] (the first two years of the mandate).