11:08 am, November 12, 2025
Trade car sourcing company mfldirect has seen a sharp increase in dealers buying electric vehicles (EVs) from its platform that are priced under £20,000.
Craig Ford, head of sales, digital and marketing at mfldirect, appeared as a guest on the latest episode of the Car Dealer Podcast. He spoke about the changes they are seeing in dealer buying, consumer attitudes to EVs, and their own business as an online retailer for 25 years.
Ford explained: ‘At the moment, the things that are flying off the shelves the quickest are those sub-£20k EVs.
‘We were consistently seeing EVs in roughly the three-year range that we sell for under £20k are selling far quicker than their ICE equivalents.
‘I think the other thing that’s really encouraging is that we’re seeing the number of independent dealers buying EVs or trying them for the first time increase quite significantly. At the beginning of the year, that was around 20% and that’s now up to about 40%.’
You can listen to the podcast in full by clicking play below or watch on the video above, where Ford goes into more detail about car buying trends.
‘We are seeing independent dealers definitely starting to move into that [EV] space in bigger numbers,’ he said.
‘There’s people who are into EVs and buying and selling them, those who are showing interest, and then those that are currently not on the journey. And that showing interest section within our research has grown by 15 to 20%, which is really significant.
‘When you speak to our teams on the phone, they get a lot more questions and queries now about what’s selling, and importantly, what margin you can make.’
This year mfldirect will sell around 200,000 cars direct to dealers, and because unlike a traditional lease company the cars are specified by consumers there is more variety to choose from.
With more consumers choosing an EV too, the company is now seeing bigger numbers coming through their sales and battery health is a common query mfldirect get from buyers.
‘Battery health is definitely a hot topic. I think for a lot of consumers, when buying a used EV, that has been something they’ve struggled with, but it’s just not an issue.
‘I think what we’ve got to try and get across to consumers is that battery health on a three-year old car just isn’t an issue.
‘I know when I speak to dealers, consumers are saying to them constantly that they want to see the battery health on this vehicle.
‘We’ve recently launched our battery protection on mfl, so if a dealer buys a used EV and the vehicle has got a battery health of below 90%, we’ll take it back. No questions asked. We’ve tested thousands and thousands of these cars, and none of them have come back with anything below 90%.
‘So I think it’s trying to get consumers into that space where they understand that a car battery isn’t like a mobile phone battery.’
Ford explained that it’s not just in response to the uptake in EVs that their trade customers are changing attitudes, the mix of cars they’re buying and where they’re coming from is shifting too for both independent and franchise dealers.
‘What we’ve seen over the last 12 months is dealers really diversify what they’re willing to buy in stock, whether that’s age or whether it’s different brands,’ said Ford.
‘I was speaking to a really large franchise dealer that was owned by an OEM, and I was quite surprised to hear that they’re stocking 35% out of franchise, whereas historically that was 10 to 15%.’
In the wide ranging interview with Car Dealer’s Jon Reay and James Batchelor, Ford shares mfldirect’s insight from selling cars online since 2000 and how the company has adapted to improve it’s service for dealers.
You can hear the whole interview on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and all good podcast platforms or watch the video on Car Dealer Magazine’s YouTube Channel.
