“What a difference a year can make: today’s figures from SMMT show this April saw light commercial vehicle registrations drop by nearly a third compared with the same month last year.
We must remember that April 2021 was the highest ever LCV registration month on record – a whopping 30,440 vans joined Britain’s roads to bring deliveries and trade to our shops and front doors.
So, no need to completely panic, although compared with the real good old days, pre-Covid, we were still more than 10% down at 21,597 units last month.
Demand for vehicles remains at a high level, but manufacturing cannot keep up because of continuing supply chain issues for components such as semiconductors.
All-in-all, these current conditions mean SMMT’s full-year outlook for the LCV market has been revised down by just under 8%, from 363,000 to 328,000 units.
There are some big positive numbers in today’s figures, with the battery electric share jumping by more than 50% year-on-year and 65.8% so far this year.
This is obviously from small base, but nearly 1,000 BEVs were registered and more than 5,000 so far this year, as new models start production with some big pre-orders attached to them.
The industry can only hope that semiconductor and other commodity issues will start to ease so that manufacturers can continue to support customers’ orders. Another 12 months can make a big positive difference.”
