My apprenticeship gave me some of the best days of my life & equipped me with the skills needed to lead businesses at the forefront of the auto industry. For employers & employees alike, apprenticeships add huge value. Find out more in this film with @thetimes & @bizsupportgovuk.

October Sales in U.K. Fri @SMMT - normally a slow month ahead of December push.

BEV 32% marketshare and will easily achieve the adjusted ZEV mandate for 2026. BEV now on track to overtake Petrol sales, undoubtedly a result of fuel price hikes caused by the Iranian conflict. Diesel is dead.

BEV plus PHEV / REEV likely to exceed 50% marketshare as consumers understand the need for energy diversity.

The mandate is working @jreynoldsMP but consumer behaviour will always correlate closely to pump prices as we ween ourselves off the oil dependency.

Year-end push lifts EV sales but Mandate gap set to widen

Battery electric cars take 32.0% of registrations as buyers respond to growing model choice and compelling offers, but year-to-date share just 26.6%.

smmt.co.uk/year-end-push-…

A pleasure to catch up with Olivier François ex-global CEO of Fiat while concurrently holding the role of Global Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) for Stellantis. Lots of old war stories!

Chery moving their design headquarters to the UK would be good news for our domestic industry. The Chinese car industry still has a long way to go and the merging of British design experience with Chinese manufacturing know-how would be good for everyone, not least motorists. I've long advocated for Britain being a destination for Chinese OEMs, but we need the government to drive that ambition.

thetimes.com/business/compa…

Britain’s mobile phone network is really unfit for purpose. Particularly when doing what a MOBILE network is supposed to do — moving!

I’m on @EE which is supposed to have the best coverage in U.K. - it’s awful!

This isn’t an inherent problem with 5G. Other countries have deployed the same technology far more successfully. Opensignal ranks Britain LAST among 29 European markets for mobile network performance. Denmark achieves 226 Mbps average download speeds against Britain’s 84 Mbps.

So what went wrong?

5G typically uses higher frequencies than legacy networks, with shorter effective range and poorer penetration into buildings and vehicles. Reliable coverage therefore requires sufficient mast density, capacity and overlapping cells to maintain connectivity during handovers.

Britain hasn’t invested adequately in that infrastructure. Much of our 5G still depends on 4G architecture, while the closure of 3G has removed a legacy fallback. Add network congestion, patchy rural coverage and unreliable handovers, and the result is familiar: phones displaying 5G but unable to transfer data, connections disappearing on motorways and trains, and calls dropping mid-conversation.

And where is @Ofcom?

It proudly reports 99%+ outdoor 4G premises coverage. But that figure is based on predicted signal strength, NOT independently verified, continuous connectivity. Indeed, Ofcom’s own figures show that only 84% of UK landmass has predicted good 4G coverage from all operators.

A signal at a stationary address is not the same as a usable connection travelling at 70 mph.

Ofcom has overseen the transition to 5G and the retirement of 3G without ensuring that network resilience, capacity and reliable handovers meet the needs of mobile users.

Why aren’t operators required to demonstrate real-world connectivity along roads and railways, with published measurements of dropped calls, failed handovers and data interruptions?

We have confused the availability of a technology with the delivery of a service.

A mobile network that cannot reliably maintain a connection while mobile is fundamentally failing its purpose.

Ofcom should be held accountable.

Honoured to be a judge on the Temporis International Awards for watches. The highlight for me was this watch, the LMB from the Grandson of Lamborghini. Congratulations to all the winners.

cannot let the evening go without mentioning the most mechanically inspiring winner and the Jury’s choice - the ARMIN STROM

And the overall winner - KONSTANTIN CHAYKIN

38k feet, 520mph, -50C and overlooking Novosibirsk looking at Gods own sunset.

This hurts to write (let’s call it tough love), but I believe that in full transparency, in advocating for EVs one must also acknowledge the downsides. My company leases a BYD Sealion (and other EV’s on the fleet) - on paper, it’s great value for money. A Chinese car @BYDCompany leased via @santanderuk But then we had an issue with a door harness - took the car to Hartwell Bracknell; they can’t fix the car - it’s been off the road 71 days chasing faults around the car. Santander don’t want to answer the phone (2.5hrs on hold today) and BYD are unhelpful with a car that has a seemly a catastrophic fault.

The cars a lemon (and frankly so are the leasing company and the dealer), the question really is, are all their cars lemons or is this a one-off?

Clearly BYD aren’t ready for scale in U.K. and don’t have the dealer back up you’d expect of a mass brand - so as much as I advocate for low cost EVs, my advice at least in the short term, is steer clear of the BYD! The same might be said of Santander leases and Hartwell dealers!

I will of course update you on any progress!

Il y a 10 ans, on nous disait qu’il était impossible de produire des batteries électriques en Europe et que l’automobile française ne ferait pas le poids face à la concurrence mondiale.

Impossible n’est pas Français !

Aujourd’hui nous avons 4 gigafactories en France, taines de milliers de véhicules électriques et nos R4 et R5 sortent de nos usines avec des batteries fabriquées chez nous.

C’est très concret, c’est bon pour nos emplois, notre économie, et cohérent avec nos objectifs climatiques.

Au Mondial de l’Auto ce matin, j’ai réaffirmé une ambition claire : notre industrie automobile française et européenne innove, accélère et se réindustrialise. Nous devons continuer et aller plus loin.

Trois priorités :

1. Protéger notre industrie.

L’accord engagé entre l’Union européenne et la Chine marque une étape pour lutter contre la concurrence déloyale, notamment sur les véhicules hybrides. Nous voulons une concurrence juste, qui protège nos entreprises et nos emplois.

2. Accélérer l’électrification et la réindustrialisation.

Plus de 40 % des véhicules vendus en septembre étaient électriques. Avec France 2030, nous avons investi dans l’innovation, relancé des filières industrielles et démontré qu’on pouvait créer des emplois tout en décarbonant notre économie. Nous continuerons, notamment avec le véhicule autonome.

3. Renforcer notre souveraineté européenne.

Avec nos partenaires allemands, nous avançons vers un accord pour concilier décarbonation, compétitivité et protection de notre industrie. Avec une priorité : produire en Europe nos véhicules et leurs composants.

Nous avons montré que nous pouvions y arriver. Soyons fiers de nos industries et de nos savoir-faire.

Continuons à décarboner sans désindustrialiser, innover sans dépendre et défendre notre capacité à produire en Europe.

Croyons en nous, en notre industrie et en notre avenir !

As an auto-industry veteran and “Car Guy”, I’m inevitably drawn to those generation cars that changed the industry; cars which bravely challenged convention and people who took a risk. Cars like Ford Model T (1908, democratising car ownership); Austin Seven (1922, influencing BMW and Datsun); BMC Mini (1959, transverse engine); Lambo Miura (1966, mid-engined supercar); VW Golf Mk1 (1974 defining hatchback); Toyota Prius (1997, scaling electrified powertrains); Nissan Qashqai (2007, crossover); Nissan LEAF (2010, pioneering the modern BEV). There are perhaps other like the Toyota Corolla, the Mercedes S-Class and the RangeRover among others that one could name. There are plenty of attempts that tried and (arguably) failed. The Tucker 48 (1948); Chrysler Turbine (1963); Aston Martin Lagonda (1976); DeLorean DMC-12 (1981); GM EV1 (1996); Renault Avantime (2001); VW Phaeton (2002); BMW I£ (2013); Toyota Mirai (2014); Jaguar I-Pace (2018). While they might not have changed the industry, they added to its learning and its history.

So what? Well I’ve had the honour to be at the centre of some of those generational cars and also cars that have failed to hit the intended target. It takes bravery and vision to cause a change. I remember one industry colleague telling me I’d have been better off throwing the $4B LEAF development budget into the Pacific!

And so I turn to the conversation; polarised love and hate; around the Jaguar 01. One has to take a personal view on style - I’ve seen the car in the flesh and its imposing; one might question the price positioning; the interior practicality; or its commercial prospects. The decision to stop production of Jaguar for two years and prepare for this launch wouldn’t have been my approach, but that doesn’t make it wrong. What the Jaguar 01 is, is brave. That is to be commended and I salute my @JLR_News industry colleagues for it. Whether it becomes a generational car or not, only time will tell; but what is sure, is that has added to the automobile history books in trying to find a new answer to a segment by leveraging an EV architecture. For the sake of this storied brand, I hope it succeeds.

From @thetimes today. Industry lobby will inevitably win concessions on the timing of the ZEV mandate; however, in compromising on the speed to transition to BEV there is room to clarify the content of the gap between 2030-2035. It should ban new “self charging” hybrids, than an ICE with a battery. The technology for PHEV and REEV is sufficiently advanced to mandate that every car should have a plug and be capable of at least 60 miles of autonomous EV range. Now is the moment to close the loophole in return for slowing the transition to full BEV (but speeding the transition to lower Co2 and clean air) @jreynoldsMP

I spoke with @LBC earlier today on whether the U.K. should increase tariffs on Chinese cars.

This is of course all true as you’d expect from the exemplary authority on car sales. But I would add that there is an R2 0.85 correlation to EV consideration when oil is between $90-100/ barrel. The argument for EV becomes economically compelling and you see this in September sales. Expect the diesel market to disappear and good luck trying to sell a 2nd hand one in part-ex for an EV!

⚡️Top 10 EV Models - September ‘26⚡️

The U.K.’s best selling EVs are 👇

Preliminary @SMMT data for U.K. car sales in September

Record electric car market powers bumper September

The New car market grows 12.1% – the 10th consecutive month of growth and strongest September since 2017.

A record 99,199 battery electric cars join the road – almost 5 s respond to the oil crisis and more models to chose from

Year-to-date BEV share reaches 26.2%, showing strong progress and almost certainly ahead of the ZEV mandate after adjusting for flexibilities enabled by the mandate.

@jreynoldsMP

❤️

Truly a living legend- Roger Taylor