Electric vehicles

Have we created a world that is worse than 60 years ago for our children

Have we let our children (and grandchildren) down? – The answer will surprise you

Depending upon how old you are, I wanted to ask – Have left the world a better place today than when you were just starting school?

As with a lot of things, this discussions has come out of a congenial discussion at the end of a business meeting. And before we all shout “yes it’s better / No, it’s worse”, I acknowledge that we are all connected to every possible piece of information, our TV’s are positively HUGE and the Unions aren’t on strike – oh, wait a minute, yes they are.

Have we left the world a worse place for our children. Does it cost us more to exist today than it did 60 years ago. We use a few comparisons

Really, I’m asking about your childrens, and grandchildrens lives. In comparison to yours.

I read an article this week, that noted that in America in the 1960’s an ‘average’ 2.2 family had one bread winner, one stay at home mum and the family still managed to buy a sensible sized family home, put food on the table, and still pay to put the two kids through college.

Can you do that today? Should you be able to?

Some numbers – I decided to avoid the Governments shopping backet with its various calculations. Boring. Instead I brought it right down to something we are all pretty familiar with – How much you earn in a year, how much did your car cost (on average) and how much did your house cost.

All fairly standard, average figures used. And the outcome . . . . . 50/50 split.

1969. Neil Armstrong had just landed on the moon and I was wearing shorts.

Income / House / Car

£1000 – £4,900 – £1,300

5x wage 1.3x wage

1995. The Spice Girls are just about to arrive.

£4,500 – £55,000 – £4,750

12x wage 1x wage

2023. We are all staring at our phones / tablets / laptops post BREXIT and Covid.

£29,000 – £258,000 – £18,500

9x wage 0.6x wage

House prices – things went really bad in the late 1990’s, when it seems no one could afford to get a mortgage, and they aren’t much better today.

Cars. Honestly, a much bigger drop than I expected, down to just over half of your annual wage.

So the key question – are we going to be ripped off by these hugely expensive electric cars?

Well, even allowing for the expensive Mercedes, Audi, Porsche and Tesla models, a sensible ‘family’ electric car is generally around £40,000. You can get cheaper and you can spend a lot more.

If we add that value to our stats –

2023 Electric cars : 1.3x annual wage.

So for cars at least, and definitely across the large family car brands, if not the Germans makes, the truth is : Your car cost you the same today as it did in the 1960’s.

Perhaps we should be reaping the cost saving and manufacturing benefits of 60 years technological advance? Perhaps we already are – you can plug it in over night, for a full charge at not a lot of money!

I’m off to order a brand new Volvo EX30 and a long extension cable immediately.

Just don’t ask how safe I think the location of the speedo is.

Electric Car, charged in less than 5 seconds.

Zap, and your gone. Really, it’s not a pipe dream.

We have had the technology to store electric car power, that charges in seconds and has 10x the power density of a lithium-Ion battery for years.

The Capacitor.

Are capacitors the real future for the EV cars. They should be.

So why haven’t we heard about it?? Well you have, and you have been using them elsewhere in the house, You have them in your refrigerator, dishwasher and microwave. But there are some limitations – but then, limitations are there to be overcome.

Capacitors, weight for weight hold 10x the power of a lithium battery.

They can charge up, completely full in 2-3 seconds (yes, seconds)

They don’t deteriorate with age like normal batteries.

So why aren’t car makes filling their electric #EV ’s with capacitors? Well Porsche tried a few years ago, but couldn’t slow them (the storage) down enough.

The problem is that a capacitor wants to give you all of its power in one go, or at best over a very short time frame. Not much good if you want it to last 3 hours on a motorway trip. So car manufacturers are looking at ways of using the superb storage and charging benefits of the capacitor while simultaneously slowing down how quickly it wants to give you that power back.

This is the real golden goose. The same power, would weigh a 10th of current EV batteries. How much better would that be to drive. How much more efficient would that be.

PLUS, the icing on top of the cake, they are not made of rare toxic metals or chemicals. A win win?

Ok, so the maximum range is probably only 15-20 miles, because it really needs to discharge that fast. So does that mean it’s a non-starter?

Lets look at the problem another way.

It takes less than 2 seconds to charge up. It can do 15 miles, conservatively, between charges. So if you needed to go 300 miles it would take 20 charges, total – 40 seconds to charge. Ok, that’s not the problem.

But slowing down, stopping etc, that’s the issue.

But what if you didn’t?

Like your mobile phone, you can have induction charging, you just have to be ‘over’ the charger for the energy to pass from the pad in the road to the car.

How about a series of pads at every traffic light, or junction? You’re bound to stop for at least a second in 15 miles!

And motorways or dual carriage ways aren’t an issue. These induction chargers can be any size or shape – they are just wires buried in the road. At 75 mph motorway speed you travel just under 34 meters in those 2 seconds.

Coils buried in the road charge the car while you drive over them #EV Induction Charging — Coils in the road charging your car

Image courtesy of www.researchgate.net / Mya Eaindra Thein

Every 5 miles you could have a string of 30-40 meter induction coils under the tarmac, you would be fully charged every time you went over them.

Major re-wiring of the roads? Well yes, but at the moment we are looking at the re-wiring of our houses and driveways, with no solution for people who live in apartments or even tower blocks.

No home re-chargers. No trouble trying to find a Tesla charging point that’s both working or free on the way home.

Technology. We love it. We just have to think about it a different way sometimes.

This of course is the same as making event marketing calls – It all happens in one week, for an event this weekend – But it can be compared to a steady, week by week, set of marketing calls, that give you a number of solid leads every week. You get the same leads, they are just spread out so you can manage and cope with them. (Plus you don’t need the attractive, ‘huge discounts’, of an event weekend.)

Have a look at our showroom log / enquiry page – Enquiry Maximisation

Does the UK get the same EV deal as Europe

Will the UK get a raw deal with EV subsidies?

Depending upon where you are sitting, the amount of subsidy provided by the government can vary enormously.

For a few years EV drivers have been smiling broadly at the £5,000 grant provided in the UK as they glide quietly about in the latest EV. But are UK drivers going to get a raw deal.

Are UK drivers getting ripped off. Does all of Europe get twice as much subsidy as the UK

France in particular, right down to where you live in France and how much you earn can offer the driver over £11,000. There are even subsidies for nearly new cars. (Seeing how much residual values are dropping for EV’s even a considerably lower subsidy is probably worth it.). The whole system is supported by the European Carmakers association the #ACEA.

They are also supporting the process at the other end with thousands of scrappage subsidies. Again depending upon which region you live in.

But aren’t they trying to push French (or European, the Italian and German governments are looking to implement the same EV subsidy model).

The short answer is yes. Of course they are, they would be foolish to give state money away to a foreign manufacturer.

But to do that when the Chinese models are expected to be so cheap is looking difficult. How do you square that circle.

The current guidelines do a couple of things, including an upper level £40,000 on the price of the car. OK for France certainly, an a few German models. Tesla and Porsche miss out, but China should, almost certainly, slide under that bar.

Limit production / manufacturing CO2 emission levels to 14.75 tonnes CO2.

Ok, a few people are looking lost here. We know that the CO2 emissions that the government talk about, for the vehicles running costs. So that they can be compared, mile per mile, to petrol or diesel models.

So what is production CO2. Simply put it is how much it actually costs to manufacture the car. (and the French model is also looking at including the cost of getting that car to the country it is selling it within). The French guide lines have a 14.75t of CO2 limit.

This rules out a lot more models. For example Tesla batteries vary from 2.5t to 16.5t depending upon the model. Add that to the steel costs for the rest of the car and it’s easy to trip over that limit.

A lot of the Chinese models from BYD don’t make it. Even the Chinese manufactured BMW iX3 fails to meet the limit.

Cars transported by sea from manufacturers in Asia

So, are the French pulling up the draw bridge, emphasising the benefits of a small Citroen or Renault (still part state owned). Of course, but then they would be foolish not to.

It might be cheap to manufacturer batteries, or produce adequate steel in China, but aside from the labour rates, they don’t always use the most ecologically sourced materials. Plus you have to transport said car via a costly shipping route, or overland by rail. Both of which have rising costs due to war torn areas of the world.

So what should Brit’s do? We can’t buy small cars made in Birmingham any more. Our best hope is that China builds factories here and uses UK steel.

At the moment the picture is very unclear. But it would certainly help if we had over £11,000 from the government to play with and a few grand subsidy for those nearly new models that are clogging up retailer forecourts.

Your comments would be appreciated.

What do you want for Christmas?

Santas choice. Do you stock ICE or BEV and PHEV models for Christmas and into the New Year.

In the car world, I think, we would like to know what stock we should be carrying into Qtr1.

In addition to retailers reducing the levels of very expensive stock on the books we also have the dilemma of petrol, diesel or electric and hybrid.

The #BEV and #PHEV models have been looking very unattractive, mainly because retailers were blowing thousands of pounds on the part exchanges they took in. You don’t want to be caught with a £4,000 loss per car.

And the customers know this. It took a few months, but buyers cottoned on to the fact that the electric cars they could smugly show the neighbours are now, potentially, a bit of a disaster area for residual values. At least they purchased the car on PCP with fixed balloon payments.

So no problem them. Well, someone has got to pay and I’m sure the finance houses will keep their rates high long enough to clear any debt. Which might slow the start of 2024.

So what about January and Quarter 1?

We are urging retailers to get their plans in early, our call centre is filling up with fast start events from retailers looking to get 2024 off to a flying start. The hope is that manufacturers come on board with continued deposit contribution offers.

If you have pencilled in either new or used car events for January and February give us a call so we can reserve your campaign a calling slot. Don’t leave it too late like many dealerships did in 2023.

Coming next week – The 12 cars of Christmas.

Greetings from America

I’m currently on my bi-annual work trip to America and wanted to bring you first hand news of current dealerships impression from this side of the Atlantic.

As in the UK, manufacturers are still hyping up the benefits of going electric, but US retailers are confirming that the buying public just isn’t behind it.

Comparison between Ford America and Ford UK. Two models shown side by side.

First adopters in urban homes, where location permits, are running two ‘main’ cars having an extra model on the driveway, a petrol for the longer trips and an electric for the commute.

A huge difference in incentive – Over here there seems to be a real mixed bag covering what drivers can get charged for –

Purchase Tax on the car varies state to state and can be as little as 0% right up to 7% of the cars value. Obviously if you live near one of those 0% state borders, it is probably worth making a weekend of it and driving some distance to pick up the car.

Emission Tax? well, no. Not really. There is a gas guzzler tax aimed at the economy of the car itself but not the amount of CO2 that comes out. This is apparently changing in the future, but many owners are sceptical.

MOT. Again, it varies State to State, but even the states that do have a vehicle test, that test is mainly limited to the time the car is sold from a retailer and isn’t comparable to the UK test. For the rest of the States it is definitely buyer beware.

As one owner put it. “Why do I need to buy electric if no one is checking? Sure, I want to help save the planet, but not at that cost.”

This is echoing the message we are hearing back in the UK through our enquiry follow up calls.

The calls are designed to improve the conversion rate of all the enquiries that land at a retailer, which it most certainly does, but the – ‘reason for not purchasing your car’ – response is very enlightening.

The number of customers that don’t really like the hands off, on-line only option is very high in the UK, outside of those customers that will always choose the latest thing, and its the same in America. A lot of disbelief that it will work at all, despite Hyundai ramping up their plans to sell new cars through Amazon.

More and more customers are waiting to see what the future is bringing, some very cheap Asian cars, hydrogen or yet another change in the rules. If Ford America can pull back from building a new electric battery factory in Europe, “there must be something in it”, is their reasoning.

The resale value of EV’s after 7 years is worrying many customers, driving down the used car value and PX prices. Some of the depreciation reported is frightening potential buyers.

One both sides of the pond. We really need to keep an eye on what customers are thinking. Sure, to sell more cars, but also to get a better idea of what our customers are really thinking.

Give me a call.

Have a look > Cymark Enquiry Follow Up

Head in the Sand – Come on Europe.

Who remembers the 1970’s ? And I don’t mean the weird music and dress sense. I’m talking about the motor trade for both cars and motorbikes.

In the UK, we were proud of our heritage with motor bikes. We built the best. Ok, they were a bit long in the tooth and you didn’t get much. But it was all about image. And no foreign manufacturers from the East could beat that.

But history proved us wrong. We were slow to compete, couldn’t offer the same value for money and, basically, over the next 10 years the British motor cycle industry died.

Has the European Motor Trade got it’s head in the sand?

Have they forgotten the lessons from the British past?

The Europeans make some bloody good cars. Not just the German models, but the British, Swedish and French as well.

But the Chinese are coming.

How long will the European motor industry last if the Chinese arrive with fully electric models from £10,000? It would have to be an amazing European car that could complete with that while costing £40,000.

Remember the buying public. The early adopters rushed towards the latest European Tesla copies, sure they were better made. But you paid a pretty price. Not all drivers will do that.

So, to compete with the Chinese, will Mercedes knock 20% off the price of their cars? Not if they want a stock holders revolt they won’t.

So where does that leave my colleagues in the UK motor trade. The dealers? I expect that a high percentage will move to welcome the likes of BYD and Geely to UK shores and add Chinese franchises to their existing showrooms or replace existing brands completely. If you can’t beat them join them. Do we have any alternative?

Alfa Romeo GTA Corse

The classic Alfa Romeo GTA Corse ages into the Totem GT-electric.

The 1962 Alfa GTA Corse was a classic the moment it was conceived. To be fair, even the picture doesn’t do it justice. In real life the car is tiny. Small but perfectly proportioned.

A modern twist on the fabulous 1962 Alfa Romeo GTA Corse. Now Totem have the all electric version

And today you can get a modern rendering of that car. Watch the video below of the fantastic Totem GT-electric. Performance is staggering. But, so is the noise. Totem have manage to maintain 60’s style with a truly modern build quality and safety features.

Given that the modern version uses original body panels (sourced by Totem) but combines them with the very latest in electric battery and drive train technology you can see why are lucky few are queuing up to be owners in the 21^st Century.

The video is worth watching, so are the links on the companies website (below) they even include a ICE engine sound that is linked to the output of the car. It sounds like a highly strung Italian racing engine is pulling you along.

Like marketing in general. Totem have focused on something that works, something that attracts the buyers and decided to ‘do it again’.

There is no age limit on a good design, be that a motor car, a piece of artwork or an advertising campaign.

If it worked once. It will work again.

In the Motor Trade we routinely run ‘Man from the Bank’, ‘Man from the Factory’, ‘VIP’ style events. Why? because they work.

Cymark is in the fortunate position in being able to provide a telesales and enquiry follow up service that works. A process that has been working since 1995.

Unfortunately not fortunate enough to own either a GTA Corse or a new GT-electric.

All our Motor Trade programmes are here – have a look at <lost sale>, <event appointments> and <email marketing>

Fantastic Totem GT-Electric Images and video c/o www.totemautomobili.com/gt-electric/

Xenophobia and the Motor Trade

Is the general motor trade, slightly xenophobic? And if it is, has that proven to be a bad thing for the countries that are slightly ‘more’ than others?

Not trying to be contentious, but the motor trade, like its buying public has always been slightly xenophobic, you only have to watch American films covering the last 30 years to see the shift away from Detroit iron to euro boxes as they used to call them over the pond.

The move has certainly been bad for Detroit and Michigan as a whole.

But across Europe, did the British stand out as ‘less’ xenophobic? We welcomed innovative design from our European neighbours with open arms through the 70’s and 80’s at the sad loss of our own Motor Trade. As Birmingham will attest.

Can we honestly say that the Triumph Dolomite or Austin Princess were worse than the Renault 12 or Fiat 128. Or a decade later was the Maestro much worse than a Renault 11 or a Fiat Strada.

Yet, these two countries probably lean towards ‘more’ xenophobia, France is still awash with Renault, Peugeot and Citroen, while Italy is strongly Fiat and Lancia. Have they done better out of a slightly nationalistic stance?

The concerns this week in the mainstream press, with France unwilling to bend over Chinese EV imports into Europe. I can see why. Out of all the European manufacturers producing today, the French machines are likely to be the most competitive against the emerging Asian brands.

I think Italy would be standing firm alongside France, except Italian politics is a law unto itself at the moment.

So where does it leave UK retailers? Over the next few years I won’t be surprised if they embrace the EV’s from China and Korea, we have done it before, we will do it again. Certainly with our handover calls, or service follow-up calls we are not seeing worse customer comments than the more UK established brands.

If new makes drive customers through the showroom door, it can only be a good thing for the retail motor trade. We need products that can be sold, or rather bought by the general public. Not just as a first car, but as a second or third.

The future is rosy, complicated, but hopefully profitable. Retail dealers are very good at finding a profit where there doesn’t always seem to be one.

#ev, #aftersales

4 Years. The Race is on.

Do you need to close as many of those EV opportunities as possible before the latest EV reports reaches the mainstream motoring press?

Just this week, Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) answered a simple question, “When will electric cars be cheaper than ICE models?”. We aren’t 100% sure who asked the question but their response was interesting.

BNEF : “Well if you count the whole life costs of the car, you could say that is now. But, looking at manufacturing, we expect EV’s to be just 10% more expensive than their equivalent petrol engine model by 2027.”

Again, more great news for the buying public. At last the future of motoring comes back into the reach of so many small car buyers.

But TODAY, you need to make the most of all those EV enquiries. What if they dry up, waiting for these new 10% cars to arrive.

If Bloomberg are to be believed, and why not they are one of the largest financial institutions in America, then would you pay today, what is roughly a 40% over charge for some models, or would you buy something short term and wait it out.

Sure, there are some exceptions. The new Volvo EX30, when it arrives will be just £34k, only slightly smaller than the existing XC40, but starting price is exactly the same.

A bit like shrinkage in the supermarket, maybe that 10% was the packaging size.

If more manufacturers follow this Swedish lead, then perhaps the 10% models will be here sooner rather than later. However, looking at the other prestige models, the current line up’s all seem to be focused on the more expensive models.

We can only wait.

If you have rising manufacturers targets, that include EV sales you need to convert as many of those EV enquiries as possible with different enquiry management programmes like Cymarks Lost Sale and Enquiry Follow-Up programmes, both improve conversion rates.

Roll on the 10%.

#ev, #volvo, #ex30, #bloomberg

How will EV law changes affect your showroom traffic?

In some ways it a good thing. Pushing back the time line for the mandatory ‘turning off’ of ICE engine cars until 2035.

I always thought 2030 was a bit optimistic, but to be fair car manufacturers grabbed it by the scruff of the neck, invested huge amounts of money and looked like they were on target to achieve it.

But the Government have now moved the goal posts.

Is buying a car a toss of the coin at the moment. Do you buy petrol, EV or a hybrid. Think of the poor soul that is trying to sell them.

Which will definitely affect customer confidence. Is this likely to affect the number of people enquiring about your cars?

Over the last couple of months we have had BMW make a couple of sweeping statements regarding the Electric Mini brand. First, it was being moved to China. With only ICE engine models being made in Cowley. Then 2 weeks ago it announced that the electric models would also be made in Cowley.

This is great news for the Oxfordshire site.

But the enquiry levels at the time certainly didn’t reflect that, with an immediate dip in showroom enquiries just after both events.

It looks like the buying public are more concerned about knowing exactly what is happening, slightly less than where the car is made. (which is a little sad).

I suspect that this weeks announcement is likely to worry the customer base even further. Already listening to half the motoring press criticising the move to electric and emphasising the potential financial costs to early adopters. Will the second wave of EV buyers be affected. Unfortunately I think so.

During our enquiry follow up and lost sale telemarketing programmes we have seen a number of customers site that exact reason “I’m unsure about EV, so I’m going to wait a year” and “I decided to buy an old petrol / diesel model to get me through the next couple of years”

Neither response helps the retailer out. Especially if you are struggling for sensibly priced used stock and the manufacturer has given you a solid EV target.

I assume that the government know all of this. The car industry is professional, if the world said – “We want all cars to run on Rape Seed Oil by August 1st”, the motor trade is likely to swear for 10 minutes and then ask “What time on the 1st?”

So it is probably the Government itself that is behind with its forced introduction – we may have the cars but not the infrastructure, and may be wavering in the face of new advances for Hydrogen models. And yet again the Motor Trade is having to pay for it.

Disappointing doesn’t really cover it.

#EV, #motortrade, #lostsales

CYMARK