8:33 am, June 16, 2025
The increasing presence of Chinese car manufacturers in the UK is causing established brands to ‘up their game’.
That is according to Peugeot’s UK managing director, Nicola Dobson, who has been talking to Car Dealer at the recent 24 Hours of Le Mans.
The experienced industry leader says that the new influx of Chinese brands into the UK market isn’t ‘necessarily a bad thing’ and described it as an ‘opportunity’ for legacy brands like Peugeot.
‘It challenges us,’ she said. ‘It brings an additional kind of competition to the market. It gives consumers more choice. It makes everybody up their game. It’s only a positive for the consumer at the end of the day.
‘It’s an opportunity for us all to continue to evolve and innovate and move forward. So yeah, greater choice to the customer has to be a good thing.’
Dobson added that the recent changes to the ZEV mandate – which included revisions such as an extension to how long hybrids can be sold and the ability to transfer credits between cars and vans – were ‘really positive’.
Dobson also stated that Peugeot will continue to be meet ZEV mandate targets – which increase up to an 80% EV sales mix by 2030 – stating that ‘we’ll be compliant this year, and that’s very much the plan to be compliant as we move forward’.
Addressing the mandate, she said: ‘It’s positive, but there’s still a hell of a lot more that needs to happen from the government side, really, in terms of moving back from public charging, in terms of increasing the infrastructure and improving all that side of things.
‘Our BEV sales are really strong, and our BEV market share is higher than our overall market share, so it’s tracking really well.
‘But upon it doesn’t seem to be at the pace that it needs to be to hit the objectives.’
