Chinese Brands Took Almost a Quarter of UK Sales, and the Best-Seller Was One of Them

September's registration figures told two stories at once. The headline was the record electric month. Underneath it, the UK's best-selling new car was Chinese for the second time this year.

The Jaecoo 7 finished top of the table with 10,814 registrations, according to the SMMT's final top ten. It beat the Tesla Model 3 on 9,929, the Ford Puma on 6,958 and the Kia Sportage on 6,521. March, the other plate-change month, also went to the Jaecoo 7, which means the car has topped the two biggest months of the year.

Autocar reported that Chinese manufacturers accounted for 23 per cent of the UK market in September. Bloomberg's Jamie Nimmo, writing in the LA Times, put the same figure at 23 per cent and noted that BYD alone took almost 6 per cent of registrations. Autocar's brand table ranked BYD second for the month on 20,140 cars, ahead of Kia on 18,399 and behind only Volkswagen on 25,972.

The car leading the charge

The Jaecoo 7 is built by Chery and sold as a petrol car or a plug-in hybrid. Prices start at around £30,000. Its resemblance to a Range Rover Evoque earned it the nickname "Temu Range Rover" on social media, a label Bloomberg used in its headline. The Jaecoo brand took a 4.3 per cent share of the UK market for the month.

The powertrain mix is the detail worth pausing on. Chery mostly sells plug-in hybrids in the UK, and only a small share of its sales are fully electric, with almost a quarter combustion-only. The car that topped the market in Britain's record electric month is not an electric car.

Why it keeps happening

The UK imposes no extra tariff on Chinese electric car imports, unlike the European Union. Victor Zhang, the UK managing director of Jaecoo and Omoda, told reporters: "Tariffs come and go but it won't change our investment in the UK. We are here to stay." Autocar quotes him saying the aim is to move from "the fastest-growing brand to a firmly established one".

The investment is visible in the details. Chery has opened a research and development base at the UTAC Millbrook proving ground in Bedfordshire, and has signed a memorandum of understanding with Nissan to explore building cars at the Sunderland plant, which could include the Jaecoo 7. The wider story of how these brands arrived is one we have followed from the start, while the tariff debate the UK has so far avoided is the subject of our piece on the EU's approach.

Look at the individual models and the picture is broader than one SUV. The MG HS was the other Chinese model in the top ten, and BYD's brand total of 20,140 cars came from a range rather than a single hit. Chinese makers are not filling a gap left by others so much as taking volume from the names that used to own it, and they are doing it with petrol and plug-in hybrid cars as much as with electric ones, which is why their share has climbed faster than the electric story alone would explain.

Pressure on the old names

Autocar also recorded the strain on established makers. Hyundai's 10,002 registrations were a fall of 31.9 per cent year on year, and Renault's 6,721 was down 29.7 per cent. The MG HS, itself a Chinese model, made the top ten on 5,444 cars. The momentum is not confined to a single brand or a single company.

There is a caveat in the same coverage. According to the 2026 What Car? Reliability Survey, nearly two thirds of Jaecoo 7 owners who hit a problem waited more than a week for a resolution. Selling cars quickly is one challenge, supporting them afterwards is another, and Chery says its new parts distribution network is aimed at exactly that.

Europe is moving faster

Britain is no longer the fastest market in Europe. Across 12 major European markets, battery electric cars took a record 33 per cent share in September, up from 22 per cent a year earlier, Automotive News reports. France reached 41.7 per cent, Germany 34.5 per cent, and Italy lagged at 8 per cent. The UK's own battery electric share was 28.3 per cent, a number we picked apart when the final SMMT data landed.

That gap shapes how this story should be read. The European figures show high fuel prices and cheap new models moving buyers even in markets where the political argument over electric cars is just as noisy as it is here. The UK's Chinese share has been built on plug-in hybrids and petrol SUVs as much as on batteries, and that mix is the part a simple electric surge headline misses.

What September settled

The total market gives the story its scale: 350,536 registrations, up 12.0 per cent year on year, with plug-in hybrids climbing 55.5 per cent to 59,571, much of that driven by competitively priced Chinese models such as the Jaecoo 7 and the BYD Seal U. Chinese brands are now part of the mainstream rather than a novelty at the edge of it.

The margin pressure runs the other way too. Chinese makers have pushed rivals into discounting, and September still saw established marques losing ground while cutting prices. For buyers this is straightforwardly good news, with more choice, keener deals and longer warranties on cars that would have cost several thousand pounds more two years ago. For the industry it is the harder side of the same story, and the question for the next plate change is whether the old names can answer on price. September suggests they have not managed it yet.