Blogs

We’re heading for an electrified future, but from where I’m sitting, we’re heading head-first into a skills gap and UK electric vehicle (EV) owners will be the first ones having to pay for it. Over 24,850 BEVs were registered in January and February this year compared to 9,776 BEVs for the same period in 2021. With the Government looking to ...

This month we launch the first of a series of features looking at Electric Vehicles (EVs). Sales are rising, and dealers and carmakers are responding to the challenges presented, in terms of charging, infrastructure, values, battery replacement, sales and aftersales. Motor Trader has also launched an EV channel on the website and a weekly EV  e-newsletter. In October we will ...

The new 22 plate released on March 1 may attract an all-time low of new registrations in what has been a traditional peak quarter. The relationship between new registrations and car sales has been broken by the constraints placed on manufacturers’ production lines by the pandemic. New registrations over the previous three peak quarters continued to demonstrate a downward trajectory: ...

Last year, when ICDP published the latest edition of the European Car Distribution Handbook (ECDH) I wrote about the slow pace of change in the size of dealer networks over the years since the end of the Global Financial Crisis.  Some conversations in the last couple weeks have come back to this subject, not so much about the principle of ...

The hot news items over the last few weeks has been the significant drop in the share price of Cazoo along with other ‘tech’ stocks. The markets appear to have decided that they need to pay more attention to profit than to Powerpoint, and are applying a more realistic valuation to businesses that are burning through investor cash, but are ...

The used car market saw a huge increase in consumer demand last year, fuelled in part by the growing number of people who believe owning a car is more important than it was pre-COVID, and the one in ten planning on buying a new car to avoid public transport. On our marketplace, traffic was up nearly 30% on 2019, with ...

Last year was a fundamental year in cementing online car retailing as here to stay. For too long, our industry has lagged other consumer industries in offering a truly convenient and transparent retail experience with trust at its heart. Now, especially in light of the pandemic effect, many retailers have realised that to succeed with car buyers, whether they are ...

The government’s Road to Zero strategy aims to have at least half of new cars ultra-low emission by 2030, with big commitments made to building the charging infrastructure. However, our data highlights the skills gap that could severely undermine the government’s ambitions. According to our calculations, 90,000 automotive technicians will be required to provide sufficient workforce to service the volume ...

You might recall that a couple months ago, I commented in my blog on the acquisition by Constellation – the parent company of British Car Auctions and online used car retailer start-up cinch – of a majority stake in Marshalls Motor Holdings, the 6th largest UK dealer group, 15th largest in Europe. Now, we had an announcement that they have ...

You can be a digital disruptor, too. Technology is easily available to all to create a service offering that matched even the largest, best-funded new entrants. There is a general perception that the digital capabilities of the major new market entrants require a level of investment and access to expertise and infrastructure that is beyond the average dealer. That’s simply ...