12:57 pm, May 15, 2023
With used EV prices continuing to dominate the headlines, we have been catching up with EV Experts co-founder Martin Miller, to gauge how the industry has reacted.
Miller, who has garages in Surrey and Hampshire, was on hand for an in-depth Q&A session as part of the latest episode of the Car Dealer Podcast.
He spoke to hosts James Baggott and Jon Raey about the impact of plummeting prices and gave his own views on what the next EV trends are likely to be.
You can listen to the full episode below but read on to see exactly what Miller had to say about the state of the electric vehicle market…
It has been a really awkward period over the last six to eight months, that must have been painful?
Painful is the absolute test. It was it was horrible but it is interesting, also, because the demographic has changed.
When we started in 2017, I think the first thing I sold was a 24 kilowatt Leaf that does 65/70 miles on a good day.
Those were real innovators, really early adopters and they’d also travel long, long distances to buy the car because when we first launched, I think there was less than 1,000 EVs for sale, full stop on Autotrader – of course there are a bit more now!
We were getting people who were travelling distances, they were really knowledgeable by the time they turned up. They were complete geeks – and I can use that word because I’m a geek myself.
Now we’re in an early majority situation. It’s a very, very different market. We still serve our geek community, but a lot more people are just making the decision for rational reasons as well.
How have you been able to manage the situation with EV prices falling so much this year?
It’s been incredibly tough. It’s not been a comfortable financial situation to be in, of course.
Having said that, the situation ultimately is brilliant news because we are pretty much at price parity on a lot of models now.
If I’m with the customer and it’s £120 to fill up their RS6, even if you’ve got off street parking, you can fill up that Porsche Taycan for around £30. Those prices are here and that makes it a very sensible decision.
You can talk to people on an economic level and that’s really good but yes, it has been a really tough. We sold more cars in August than we did between September and December but there is stability back in now and I think the market’s evolving.
Did you have to massively readjust prices as a result of values falling? How have you actually managed that?
We’ve stayed competitive on market prices. We haven’t done a complete fire sale of throwing everything away.
Some of the losses are frighteningly big but some of the profits on some of the units we’ve sold recently have been also quite nice.
We haven’t made up for all the losses but I think any market that’s falling, somebody’s got a call ‘I’m going to get back in that market’ and right now, when the equivalent petrol or diesel car is parity or even more expensive, if you’re looking at something like the Minis, you just think ‘that seems like a good time to go back in’.
We’ve never had more cars in stock and that’s because we’re buying strong right now. I see this as an opportunity. It’s a market. You can’t just wish for it to change, you’ve got to just make the best decisions that you can.
Are you starting to see prices level out now?
A few weeks back, we were at Fully Charged Live and we had 21 vehicles on stand with 30,000 walking through and most of them wanted to sit in the BMW i4.
We had a Jaguar I-Pace on at £33,500. It was a 2018, less 20,000 miles, right colour and right spec. People could not believe that that was £33,500. That it was just ‘wow, I can get that car for that money’.
We’ve got things like the Peugeot e-208 , at around 20,000 pounds for something that does, real world, about 160/170 miles, 100 kilowatt, fast charging, nice platform still going to be manufacturer’s warranty and it’s a good looking car.
There are cars that have got further to go but there are also cars that are going to go north and genuinely go north quite a lot.
What are you buying at the moment? What’s hot for you?
We’re finding the anything on the Stellantis platform is doing well. The likes of the Corsa and the 208.
We are still selling lots of Nissan Leafs because sub £20,00 for a big battery Nissan Leaf is a lot of car for the money.
You can genuinely look people in the eyes and say it’s a really reliable product and it’s a great all rounder.
It’s not going to excite the petrolhead in me. But guess what? Not all customers are driven by that.
What hurdles do you have to overcome when you have discussions with people coming into the dealership?
The first thing you have to do is walk the talk. So I every week get a customer comes in who says ‘I’ve tried to buy X or Z from from a competitor and I’ve asked the salesmen what they drive and they say, a diesel Qashqai’, and they lose that sale.
You need to be knowledgeable enough to actually have that conversation because you have to be that person who is EV.
The first question always is, ‘how can you charge at home?’ ‘Have you got off street parking?’ because you know that’s going to steer the next section of the conversation.
Then you go to range. We sell lots of cars to customers in London who don’t have off street parking but you say buy a Hyundai Kona, it’s nice and small, in the real world it does about 240 mils and for most people people in London, that’s a week’s worth of motoring so you only got to charge about once a week, not stress.
Now, clearly, you don’t sell them that 24 kilowatt Leaf that needs charging every day that does 70 miles on a charge because if you haven’t got off street parking, that’s gonna be a pain in the backside.
You have got to understand where they charge. You’ve also got to understand that it’s not always about charging at home. Workplace charging is coming a lot of organisations are doing it. It’s a relatively cheap thing to give to to employees and makes them very happy. Certainly the ones with EVs.
You’ve then got to be honest about the fact that if you can charge at home, it’s more economically beneficial than charging on public network but that does depend on the individual.
A lot of people will, do low miles don’t have off street parking, there’s a still a huge benefit to it.
The final thing you’ve obviously got to talk about is range. The the favourite line I always use is ‘so you want a car with the batteries bigger than your bladder?’.
Ultimately, if you’re looking at a 50 year-old-man who says they can drive 400 miles without stopping you just have to have a little conversation and say ‘really?’.
If a car can do 200 miles, which in the in London and the south east is three hours motoring. You’re going to stop.
Should the government be doing more to incentivise people to buy used EVs?
So I would say yes, please, of course. I think a few things would help. Clearly a cash incentive could work on a registration bonus but that will be difficult to happen.
What’s happened in a lot of other countries is discounted finance, that is supported, government-funded, low cost finance, especially as the perception is that they’re expensive.
The other barrier to take up is clearly the lack of charge point grants. When we first started, you could get charge point installed for £100. Now that is £1,200 pounds and that’s a big barrier.
What we tend to do is to put the cost of the charge point install as part of the car package so that it’s part of the finance deal. It softens it but even still, that’s quite a quite a barrier.
