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- New van registrations for October down nearly 15%
- But as other OEMs falter, Toyota and Land Rover perform well
- Electric vans take just over 9% of October’s new van market
- ZEV target will start to impact fleet decisions in 2026, warns Liam Nicholas from Vanaways
NEW van registrations have gone from bad to worse over the past month. October figures for LCV registrations are down nearly 15% against a year-to-date figure that’s been running 10% down.
On top of this, despite significant growth in the market share of electric vans, the industry is still way off its ZEV Mandate target of 16% for 2025. Year-to-date, and with two months to year-end, electric vans make up 9.1% share. And in 2026, the target jumps 50% to 24%. This ZEV hike means that even with this year’s 47% increase in battery electric vans, next year’s goal will be even harder to reach.
All industry commentators blame poor business confidence and a weak economy, with retailers that spoke to Broker News adding that smaller businesses are just less willing to change their work van until there’s more certainty and positivity. One expressed the opinion that sales had slowed ahead of the Chancellor’s Budget due later this month.
The SMMT’s rolling-year chart for LCV registrations shows the market’s at 321,681 vehicles, down from a high of nearly 380,000 vans five years ago, but is also trending downward.
Why fleets need to start thinking about electrification
Liam Nicholas, Director of Business Development, Vanaways
Winners and losers
Source: SMMT
Toyota may be having a torrid time with its new car registrations, but it’s a shining light in the LCV arena. Toyota is the only brand showing significant growth, being up more than 4,000 commercial vehicles over the first 10 months of 2025.
Retailers report a quality, value line-up and relatively extensive range as the main reason for the growth.
While not on the same scale as Toyota, Land Rover is also performing well. Despite the cyber attack that struck in late August, killing production for well over a month, Land Rover increased LCV registrations in October, compared with the same month last year.
While the bottom five fastest falling brands haven’t changed for a few months, just outside the lower end of the figures Peugeot had a particularly poor month. In October alone the brand dropped 1,697 vans taking its year drop to 2,614 vehicles.
All four of the Stellantis LCV brands are now underwater in terms of year-to-date registrations. Their combined drop is more than 18,000 units or nearly 7% of the market year-to-date. As a whole Stellantis now accounts for 22% of the UK LCV market and remains, as an OEM, in second place behind Ford with nearly 36% share.
Top 5 fastest growing brands by volume YTD
Bottom 5 fastest falling brands by volume YTD
1 Toyota 4,400
2 Land Rover 619
3 Maxus 409
4 MAN 352
5 Nissan 154
5 Volkswagen -3,195
4 Citroen -4,153
3 Mercedes -4,313
2 Renault -5,093
1 Vauxhall -9,043
Read our new van market analysis of September 2025 registrations
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Tristan Young is an award winning journalist with more than 25 years’ experience reporting on the automotive industry focussing predominantly on fleet and retail. As a self-confessed petrol-head, Tristan has a weakness for car classifieds. When he’s not writing about the automotive industry, he can usually be found outdoors with a small pack of border collies.
Hard to believe that we’re weeks away from 2026 and under the UK’s ZEV Mandate, 24% of all new vans registered next year will need to be electric, writes Liam Nicholas of Vanaways.
That’s not optional, it’s the legal quota manufacturers have to hit!
If you run a fleet, this kind of matters.
It means supply, pricing, and lead times are all going to shift fast. ICE vans will get harder to source, and the balance of manufacturer incentives will move toward EV.
The key question for 2026 isn’t ‘should we go electric?’ it’s ‘how do we make it work operationally and financially?’”
In the latest figures from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) UK new LCV registrations fell by 15.1% year-on-year in October, this includes a 5.8% year-on-year fall in electric LCV sales, the first decline seen in this segment for 13 months.
Mike Hawes said: “While October’s decline is unsurprising amid the intense economic pressure facing businesses, returning the van market to growth is essential – especially to underpin new investment in zero emission models, which until now had bucked wider trends.
Every lever must be pulled to get the market back on track, and transitioned at mandated levels. Accelerating infrastructure rollout and grid connections, in particular, will help ensure government targets are not just an aspiration but are actually deliverable for manufacturers and operators alike.”