Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders

Absolutely amazing car, which me and Jim have discussed before.

I saw that back in May when we went to SMMT.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah,

Yeah.

Have you actually driven one yet? I drove one.

So as of recording with SMMT, it used to be called SMMT South, but it's SMMT Live or something now.

That was yesterday.

Ford and Nissan want a lower EV target in 2030 of 40% or 50%.

And the lobby organization paid for by the carmakers, called the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders here, said the carmakers have spent billions to meet the requirements.

And the buyers themselves don't want EVs.

But the target isn't a simple sales quota.

I didn't hear any spectacular jokes, but the thing that happened to me that I felt very good about was I had a go in a Honda Super N, the little electric thing that's nearly a K car, but has a bit fatter electric car.

And there was a drive day, SMMT drive day, which I went to.

And it was day two, so all the influencers were invited in and they normally swarm all over everything and you can't do what you need to.

So I got up early, hijacked this car before it had been sort of shammied off and charged and all that.

More than a third of all new car registrations in September were electric.

So said the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders.

And I know what you're thinking.

You're thinking, what do the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders know about motor vehicles and their trade? You're thinking...

And it's not as though it's a bigger percentage of a smaller number, either, because car sales last month were at the highest level in over ten years.

Everybody wants one.

That's 28.3% of the market, but the target is 33%.

The SMMT says that needs another 265,000 by December.

September is always a big month because it's new plates.

The whole market was up 12%, 350,000 cars, but electric grew three times faster than the market, 91,201 battery electric cars, the most ever in any single month.

Electric vans had a record month too, 4,832, up 13%, but that's only 9.6% of the van market.

The van target is 24.

The SMMT says vans are less than halfway there.

And there's-- here's the twist.

that essentially people were taking content of other people's vehicles.

Now, SMMT report out in the last few days has some positive news and not so good news.

So the positive news is Britain is seeing its best quarter in truck sales for nearly three years since 2023.

And they're seeing an uptake overall, 7.2% compared to the previous quarter overall.

No, agreed.

The latest SMMT figures show that battery electric cars captured 29.8% of new registrations, that's August, with volumes rising by 27.7% year on year.

How significant is that milestone, do you think?

I think it's very significant in that we've now, um, a lot of people are saying the same thing.

There's huge, huge growth in brands like BYD, Jaikoo.

That's according to data from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders released last week.

I spoke with Robert Forrester of Virtu Motors last week and here was his explanation as to why that's happening.

The market is very strong, 10 months of growth.

Yeah, let's talk about the news.

And not everything is bad news and anger-inducing because, obviously, we're early into October, so we've just had the SMMT new car registration numbers from September.

And it was a bumper year for the market in general and another record-breaking year, month, you know what I mean, and a record-breaking month for EVs.

Yeah.