We are very pleased to announce our podcast association with Carwow, and look forward to working with the team.
Estelle Miller, the inspiring Co-Founder of EV Experts Ltd, has been kindly introduced to us by Carwow, and we are delighted to share her interview in this episode.
Estelle and her husband Martin, established the business in 2017, with the aim to help customers make informed decisions about moving to EV. They had experienced difficulties themselves when trying to source a second hand EV and thought there was a GAP in the market.
She explains that customers can take longer in the buying process moving to electric, and to start with its often not about the car, but seeking information on range and charging. Ensuring your systems are in place to keep in contact with those customers is key.
We go on to discuss everything from sourcing electric vehicles to depreciation curves and the disposal of the batteries.
Here are the highlights:
{01:14} The start of the journey
{17:20} VAT rate at public charging stations
{18:58} The drawbacks of hybrid technology
{31:51} Depreciation on electric vehicles
{58:21} Is Hydrogen the future?
{01:03:22} Advice for selling EV’s
About Symco Training:
Symco Training was founded in 2000 by Simon Bowkett and it was his belief that the business had to offer its clients something different. That difference was clear to Simon from his days in the dealership when he experienced many sales trainers who had all the answers, but were unable, unwilling or both to actually show the delegate how they could be implemented. It remains the ethos of the business today. You see, Symco only employ trainers that are committed to delivering not only in spiring and insightful training, but are equally as happy to demonstrate these skills and techniques with real customers in your own showroom. We believe in order for sales training to be effective and in Simon’s words ‘real world’, it needs to be tried and tested in the only place it matters the showroom floor. There is no room for theory when your goals are for your team to sell more cars, hours or parts and retain more profit. In dealerships around the world the focus applied by many of the sales executives is to try and sell a deal. Symco specialise in getting your teams to focus on selling themselves, the product and then supporting this with the deal.
To find out more visit www.symcotraining.co.uk
Time, welcome to the Selling and the Motor Trade podcast in Association of Car Without. The online Car Changing Destination. Together we share tips and ideas on how to sell more cars, improve your service department, and generally put more profit into your department, dealership or dealer group. I'm your host, Simon Bowkett, or some of you might already know me as Skippy. First thing, I just want to say thank you for taking the time to listen to this podcast. Hi and welcome to another episode of Selling and the Motor Trade. Today I'm joined by Estelle Miller. Now Estelle runs EV Experts. I'm really excited to talk about everything electric from a used car perspective because Estelle and her husband Martin have run EV experts and I just want to see from the floor from the ground exactly what it's like retailing electric vehicles and used electric vehicles in the modern motor trade at the moment.
So welcome aboard Estelle. Hello, thank you for having me. Listen, before we start, can you tell us a little bit about your background? How did you start in the motor trade? So in 2016 we decided to reduce our carbon footprint and one of the things we wanted to do was switch to an electric car. My husband Martin is an earlier doctor, sort of techie type person so he yeah, he was king and I was working for a charity at the time. My background is actually sort of corporate law and governance and I was working in environmental charity and we were looking at the circular economy, we were looking at a number of things and one of the companies that we were working with at that time was Renault, who obviously launched the Renault ZOE.
So we set off in 2016 trying thinking let's go for it. We want to buy used, buy used not just cars but I buy used clothes, I buy the whole circular economy thing. You know, why make someone make something new if there's something where the energy's already been expended to produce something and let's get that. So anyway, it was really tough, really, really hard. Couldn't really find people selling secondhand electric cars, even going to dealerships, you know, they didn't know a lot about them, were reluctant to dig them out if they dig them out, they didn't have any charge so you couldn't test drive them and it was just a really difficult experience and it hits home that they're just not going to take off unless there's a really decent place where you can buy pre-owned and you know that's going to affect new residuals if there isn't a decent pre-owned market and yeah, so my partner, my husband at that time was between jobs and he has a marketing background.
Yeah, it actually taken some time out sadly to support a family member who'd been diagnosed with terminal cancer and was then returning to the workplace and had a bit of capital and thought it would be a brilliant idea to set up a used EV independent specialist dealership. So that's what we did and initially we were based at home for the first, so we set it up in May 2017 and we were at home for the first sort of six, seven months but actually it just took off even in those early years and it was too much to run from home so we secured premises in Guilford on the A3, southbound, it used to be a petrol station, we quite like the irony of that.
Yeah and we've been there ever since and then we opened a second site in 2022 in Hampshire and yeah, we're still here, the team's grown, the number of cars on the on the four quarters grown and the type of customer is growing too and that's been an interesting part of it and so in the beginning we were selling to a lot of early adopters, really, you know, techie people, they needed a lot of information, they were very particular about their spec and about the condition of the car whereas now we're seeing early majority and their requirements are a bit more practical, they need a bit more assistance and support on that EV journey in terms of where they're going to charge, how they're going to charge.
Yeah. Okay so most of the time we speak to people, they're their motor traders or their life, they've worked in a traditional car dealership so you've gone straight in not being a motor trainer, I love the idea of that, you just said let's go for it from marketing with Martin and yourself in the law background as well, how do you find when you first set up the dealership? There must have been some challenges there. There was a bit of a learning curve, I mean Martin did have some car background, not dealership background so he worked on the advertising side both Ford and Peugeot and just like you know who's a complete petrol head, complete car nut so knew a lot about cars, so in terms of information about how to talk to customers, how to present yourself, yeah we had a bit of a head start I guess on that, we sell cars in this way that we would like to have to purchase cars, so it's kind of a consultative experience we listen to what the customers want, we are very, we go from what the customers looking for rather than trying to sell what we want to sell off the forecourt because we've been looking at it too long, so it's kind of a different conversation I think to the traditional conversation, there is a lot of chat about how to charge and other things that have nothing to do with the actual model that people are buying, so and inevitably in a lot of our conversations we end up sourcing a car for someone rather than selling the thing that's that's in front of them, so yeah it is a bit different but it was steep and I don't know if I'm allowed to shout out but it could you what?
So we we autotrayed run you know like seminars and information and webinars that were really helpful in those early days and some of them were in person because of saying, really pre-covid, so you know they were really helpful, really great and in fact to repay that we have participated in water traders tutorials about selling EVs and because yeah it's it is a bit different. Can you tell me about your experience when you're tried to buy a Zoe, so you and Martin did you go to franchise dealership and look for used cars there? I know it's going back to 2017 but what was the experience like? So well so we started with with the Zoe and we went to three different Renault dealerships, one to look at a new Zoe and two to look at used that they had in and in one as I said they couldn't get we got there and said we could still come get it started so we can't even bring it round it's round the back it won't move would you like to buy a Clio?
And the second one it was yeah you don't want a Zoe and we don't even have one would you like to buy a Clio? Well why did they decide you didn't want a Zoe because you decided I want to go green I want second hand I like the whole recycling idea but they've decided you didn't want a Zoe is that right? Exactly right and so we then decided maybe we would get an i3 we had a slightly better experience from BMW dealerships and specialists and the specialist and that's actually in the end what we bought and then shortly after that we bought Nissan Leaf obviously a little battery 24 kilowatt and it kilowatt Nissan Leaf again from a Nissan dealership but used and that actually was a really good experience in the end it was just really hard persuading the salesperson that that's what we wanted we don't want to go electric it's going to be a nightmare you know we won't be able to charge anywhere and I mean to be honest back then people moan about the infrastructure now oh my word but we would buy cars that we brought a car near borders in Scotland yes it was a 22 kilowatt Zoe and we had to drive it down yeah I mean five very long stops so to us now I mean the infrastructure I think is pretty good now I zip around the country rarely with difficulties yeah it was I think it was that people that the sale and the salesman had never driven themselves so you'd get in and they'd be like I've not actually been in it yet it started it's not making noises I was working with Nissan dealerships at the time with the leaf so the leaf was that really rather beginning the EV in the UK anyway and I can remember at the time and Nissan said you've got to register these cars no matter what because we can't sell them okay I can't remember what the government grant was at the time but it was significant and they still couldn't sell them and I tell you what it's um I don't think Jeremy Clarkson helped because I can remember at the time do you remember this a sell he was he drove up the north in this leaf run out of power and I'm sure it's all for entertainment I'm sure there was a lot of exaggeration in there but what was that 10 years ago no it'd be 15 years ago I think something like that so and Nissan makers 2011 so yeah wow that was the time and then again I remember driving the first um I couldn't have spent on show my age now but thinking it's going to be a golf cart and even the leaf and you had this all the time wow they have some talk wow they have some acceleration absolutely and this is the thing that I found a bit frustrating actually because in all the media noise particularly over the last um so 18 months two years this whole other environmentally friendly are they cheaper to run the the noise around those two issues has completely drowned out that they're actually really good fun to drive yes you're actually a really good driving experience um they are easy to drive um a lot of them you know there's their smooth um we saw some research that um a university did that suggested that they are better if you suffer from travel sickness they're better for dogs if they travel they suffer from travel sickness so yeah I mean honestly they're great to drive and but I particularly like cars the EVs that do single pedal driving so um the i3 obviously did that right from the start the Nissan leaf didn't bring that in until 2018 when they uh relaunched the the second gen I mean I'm a real Nissan leaf girl um it's I'm really it I mean I can understand that they decided not to kind of bring out a third reiteration of it perhaps ccs rapid charges but um yeah I'm going to miss my Nissan leaf I loved it um yeah again the single foot driving I don't know if that separates us real motor traders with petrol in our bloods because I started when I was 17 and it's um again the driving I I never put it in the braking mode I put it in the drive mode and but then my son is always in the single foot braking mode and I I wonder if that's uh just what we're used to I don't know we as humans we don't like change do we yeah I mean I think I think that is part of the problem here about the switch to EVs and that's why us as dealers you know really have a responsibility to help people understand what it is and to reassure them and guide them through that journey because you you start obviously with a resistance to change um I think that is you said it's a natural state for us humans and um and to have people who can I mean for example with technology um you know it's a standing joke but we all rely on our kids don't we too yes understanding how to use the next phone how to use I don't know snapchat and Instagram so we rely on our children to navigate us through those developments you know even ringo parking apps etc but obviously we can't rely on our children to help us with a car because they're not live yet and um and of course even young drivers because EVs are so quick um and you know high horsepower they are expensive for new drivers to to be at your dawn and so even if you've got a young driver in your in your household the chances are they're not going to be an electric car yet until they've got a few years no claims behind them perhaps over 21 or 23 years old so um so yeah we can't rely on our kids anymore to explain it to us we we need the people we're buying the cars from to to take us through on that journey and just explain how it works and this is one of the things that we did right from the start obviously myself and Martin were the sales team when we first watched our business but as we grew we've taken on sales people um again not from motor trade um they do have retail backgrounds but not motor trade but one of the requirements of the job is that they commute in stock cars yes yes so they are driving the electric car every day and because we're in independent specialist as well remember you know we can sell you know the cars of 20 different manufacturers and some of those manufacturers have several models so the other thing as well is you know we're EV experts i'm not necessarily an expert on the seventh menu in you know a care yes but um but we need at least a possible understanding and knowledge of each individual car so it's really important to us that our customers yeah get a great experience and so we do get the salespeople to to drive those cars every single day now i i know you're a use car operation i'm going to talk lots about use cars and i want to get your view on residual values use cars where they're going but before i do that because you're at the sharp end speaking the customers day in day out i want to talk about this new cars 28 percent of cars next year have to be zero emission cars okay um and i just want to get your view is are we going to make it because electric vehicles to start with there are lots of incentives zero tax cheap electricity the paper mile charging system we we know the government has to change that if everyone goes electric which is going to happen or sorry zero emissions i should say and they need to get revenue from somewhere to fix the potholes in the road definitely around where i live so i want to ask you is the the paper mile charge is it hindering the adoption of electric vehicles for customers are our customers concerned about that well um the conservative government two years ago already announced that electric cars would now would start paying road tax from april 2025 at the standard rate unless they were older than 2017 in which case there are that 20 pound cheaper rate um so that's already accepted and a lot of people are aware of that um it's been a long time coming and and there's been a lot of uh publication and media about that so i don't think that bringing in paper mile is you know going to make much to hinder the switch to electric um i mean it might help make people look at how they transport themselves from a to b and um decide that perhaps they could use um other forms of transport that perhaps you know are more environmentally friendly much you know public transport for example um cycling and and you know and i can see that the government wants to encourage that but then equally yeah i mean we're all moaning about the state of the roads you know it is it has definitely been a deterioration over the last decade and yeah something's got to go to pay for that so i'm not sure that that's really going to hinder and i'm going to perhaps slightly controversially say that i don't feel that switching to ev should be incentivized by ev drivers not paying road tax i i'm i'm not i've never been in in that sort of but there are other things that i think the government should should do you know as an example um if you charge your car at home then the VAT you pay on your electricity is five percent if you charge your car publicly then the VAT you pay on your electricity is 20 percent you know that to me that just doesn't make sense it's not fair it penalizes people who are unable to charge at home and you know and something as simple as that i think you know would be a really positive step of the government it's just no reason to um to continue with that disparity yeah i think that sort of thing should be uh encouraged by the government to incentivize or because those things are still are barriers people are like hang on a minute you know public charging is really expensive you know it's a barrier and um the government needs to perhaps take down those barriers because ultimately the whole point of switching to electric cars is is to reduce emissions emissions are so harmful and the number of child deaths that there are every year you know then the amount of money that we spend through the NHS on supporting people who have respiratory problems that are caused by emissions so uh you know electric cars aside we need to reduce the emissions that we make into our environment and you know electric cars are a great way to do that as a society and the government needs to support that transition yeah i i want to get your views now then on hybrid technology i know we spoke before uh this and and i i think we have a similar views on hybrid technology uh there will be a lot of people think well it's a logical step if they're going from internal combustion diesel to petrol uh they their range is not quite right yet so maybe hybrid's the logical step for them and next cycle they go full EV and of course there's different self-charging hybrids there's plug-in hybrids what if you're on the hybrid well i can say people don't listen to this you should have just seen the look on a stealth space well i said that most people listen to this podcast so i i think i've opened a can of worms brace yourself brace yourself let me try and become so i have a number of thoughts we have a number of thoughts about hybrids they are quite probably the worst of both worlds i think that's the start you know a lot of people say they're the best of both worlds they're not the best of both worlds because you end up with a vehicle that's going to be significantly heavier it's carrying a petrol system as well as an EV system they usually do so few EV electric miles that it's just pointless you know when i say so few i mean literally sort of 12 to 15 miles electric miles you'll get out of it so you're gonna have to plug in every day if you don't if you can't charge at home that's going to be extremely inconvenient and what do you get 12 to 15 electric miles it's yeah it seems bonkers to me i'm going to be honest and then you're carrying around a big heavy battery and it makes it worse for your consumption exactly and also the because of size constraints they tend to have smaller petrol engines in there so then when you're trying to get performance out of the car they're under they underperform or you know you're pushing that petrol engine to the to the maximum that it's able to give all the time so you're working that petrol engine really hard and that's not great for it or for your for your pocket because ultimately they are very complex machines they are going to be expensive to maintain and service and keep on the road and you know and i can see why manufacturers quite like that because obviously it's ongoing revenue for service centers and i can see why manufacturers are turning to this slightly in desperation because there's been so little support for consumers to making the full switch to EVs and so they're like okay well maybe we need to provide hybrids then so at least they buy something so yeah i i think it's a real shame now having said that there are use cases i completely get it that there are some people out there who do a lot of miles they perhaps can't charge at home so i i think there there are some slightly niche use cases where our hybrid is perhaps required or helpful and i think if the government decides to allow the sale of hybrids you know beyond 2030 that could help you know those people who are in that scenario but you know quite frankly nowadays what for £15,000 you can buy a car that will comfortably do 150 to 170 miles of range most people don't even do that in a week and i think it's 60 percent of households have driveways or the ability to charge either at home or at work and and also if you're only needing to charge once a week well if you need to do that publicly that's also not necessarily that big a deal because it's something you're only doing once a week i mean back in the day i used to drive to a petrol station once a week to fill up with petrol so you know if you've got somewhere that's around the corner from your home and you can drive there plug it in once a week wander back or you know there are ways that that can happen so you know unless you have a really unusual setup and use case i would say you know there's no reason to have a leapfrog in between you might as well just go full electric enjoy the great driving experience enjoy the reduced maintenance and servicing costs and yeah and the fact that you are zero emissions yeah i'm looking at i need to change my car at the moment and i drive a five series i've had three five series because i i'm a 25,000 mile a year person and unfortunately i work where to London regularly to Edinburgh and it's it's one of those things so so i think it's education so you look at the 530e and seriously they're saying i'll get 40 miles on plug-in and then you're carrying around a big heavy battery and it's it's education so when you're on the motorway that car just makes no sense at all um you are so much better either just saying you know it's just not going to work for that trip at the moment changed around because that hybrid is um there is a lot of people i think of bought hybrid maybe not now education's getting out there but bought the hybrid because they thought they thought they're doing the right thing they really did yeah and i have i do have sympathy with that you know um a couple of them manufacturers were pulled up for their advertising by the advertising standards authority in the early days you know for example talking about a self-charging hybrid self-charging you're charging a battery with petrol and they had to change their advertising because it was uh deemed as misleading yeah but again it comes back to your right having education and support at your point of purchase to really understand you know what's going to work for you and you know 25 oh well this is another thing that frustrates me now you've got me going so metering down lists have a really unusual use case you know they do do 25,000 miles a year and inevitably they've been a bit disappointed with their charging experiences or or you know have had some frustrations and then they go out there into the press with the whole electric cars are rubbish and you actually what electric cars are rubbish maybe if you do 3000 miles a month and maybe i mean the life of a journalist is tricky because you know you don't know where you're going to be tomorrow because you will be where the story is and that story might be 300 miles away it might be three miles away so i completely get it and you know quite frankly if that is the use case you we say to people in our forecourt who come with with these kind of you know problems or or their budget doesn't doesn't get them a car that does enough range for their needs you know we're just like stick with petrol stick with petrol or diesel until you know there's a movie that works for you in your budget and with your lifestyle and i don't think we should be afraid to say that so i do forget a bit frustrated because that's what you're hearing in the media and the reality is if you look at MOT data last year i think it was around 6000 miles a year was was the average for for cars now obviously i appreciate that there will be cars out there that are doing literally nothing and maybe getting an MOT and they're they're a talking error and so i was looking at the data given by the leasing association and that's pretty accurate because they you know they've got cars where they're charging people extra mileage and and so they're monitoring mileage of all the cars on their fleets and they're talking about sort of sevenish seven and a half thousand miles being the average number of miles that an English puzzle or someone in the UK does in a year and and so when you're starting to look at that there really is there really are a lot of people out there who who could make the switch quite happily and would love it and who definitely do not need a hybrid well i tell you a second time adopters that's quite a lovely figure i'd like to see early on in the leaf day so i'm going back right at the beginning sure there were people who went to leaf and went this not working from yet and going back to petrol diesel but now i think it really has changed i think it's changed lots and even the press i've got to say it's 2024 now i think there's as much strong press towards it and again if you want the petrol heads strap yourself into a a tycan or one of these things and you'll have all the fun in the world you not have acceleration times better than their 911s or whatever they have there so i think it is changing now do you feel it's changing speaking to consumers now yes i think it is and i think it is as more people have driven them and start talking about having fun enjoying the driving experience there are also some you know is it Hyundai that have brought out the end and they're bringing in some noises and some more feedback for drivers and i i do get it you know if you're a real driver and a real petrol head you have less feedback through the steering wheel and through the sort of vibrating it's you know so and manufacturers are starting to address that and there are already some things that are that are fun and give more on the market available and the other thing as well is i think people are starting to be more flexible about how how they transport themselves when we started up actually i was speaking to a journalist and right then you know we were driving car you know all that was available sort of 60 70 miles of range which is that that can be a little bit squeaky on some days it's not it's quite funny how quick it's changed though hasn't it when you say those numbers i'm like no but it's like it has changed so quick and bloody killer what battery for me was a bit of a game changer so i was a mom and you know doing the school run doing you know both my kid one of them was quite sporty so he was in you know would be playing rugby here there and everywhere the other one was musical and there would be you know he's playing an orchestra here or the church there and so you know you're a bit all over the place and there were days where i'm like oh so then when the 30 kilowatt lee came out um you know i had 120 miles of range because i had one that was just six months old so it was yeah in great shape and that was a real game changer and i found that there were so few days where i did more than 100 miles so i was always looking at 20 30 40 miles of range left which you know makes you feel comfortable but the other thing as well is that um you know i kept people on the forecourt where like once a year we we tried to Scotland and so we need a car that's going to do like 600 miles and i'm like well once a year we all have birthday parties or Christmas and it would be great to own a mini bus but none of us own a mini bus all year round because once a year you know we we want to get the family together in a quick and easy way we find other solutions for those unusual journeys or unusual things that we want to do and you know actually maybe when you go to Scotland yeah you you um hierarchical for that trip or maybe you take the train have you heard what Lexus is doing at the moment because they know the the range and they uh i i think it's the uh i'm not sure which one but it's it's not the best so they're saying hey for that i think four times a year you want to do a long trip come in and we'll give you a petrol car to go and do the journey on i thought that was quite different um so they've just said yep you know what for the vast majority of times you're gonna be fine now i i know we're talking about new cars so i want to get them to use cars now but having said that um we do have this zzivig mandate okay and this year it next year it's going to be 28 percent this year there are lots of manufacturers that bought their way to that target because there was going to be a 15,000 pound fine i think it's been well documented about Honda had their electric vehicle was not selling at all until they threw the world at it as in finance deposit contributions and deposits and extra bonus towards them they sold it most deals were selling on a PCB around the the 200 a month and they just bought the market they've just got there what effects it's not just Honda lots of manufacturers have done that some people got their naturally like BMW they didn't have to worry about it but what effect is that going to have on the residual values of these used cars if the manufacturers keep doing that to get to that target it's going to have a knock on effect on the in the residual used cars are they going to keep plummeting in price so i think um i mean last year was a real road in cecilia before they were artificially high because of component shortages so it's really difficult to get any kind of norm but we have been looking at this and i think where we're at right now is the once an eevee gets to sort of three to four years old it is then following the same depreciation path as it's petrol or diesel equivalent but on an eevee it's front loaded so in that first 12 months they are they're losing quite a lot and significantly more than a petrol or diesel car do you have any data why that is is it because the manufacturer keeps up bringing bigger batteries better range i kind of i liken it to the phone industry and you you get a phone now that a three-year-old iphone's worth nothing what's the difference between my three-year-old iphone and the one they just gave me a week ago i can't really work out that much difference but because of is that what's happening do you think is there any data on that um it's interesting i don't have i haven't drilled down that that much to be able to understand i mean i think it is because you know we're still at the point where new eevees are running about 20% more expensive than perhaps a petrol diesel so the car is starting are higher okay and then when it comes into the used market perhaps after a year or two years it's then having to join equivalents that may not be electric and will be petrol and diesel and and that market is requiring the car to be cheaper so they are and also actually i think the other thing as well is that you've got a fair bit of over supply because in all of these new cars going out on you know being pushed hard on new deals use car pricing is all supply and demand so if there are hundreds of hundreds of basic spec red whatever's which was the free color maybe then you know there's loads of supply and yeah and if the demand's not get there then the prices are just going to keep sliding until until it gets to a point where people are willing to buy them so so that's been i think i think there are some over supply issues and i definitely see it with um basic models i suppose they will have to be over supply issues if the eevee mandate they have to get 28 percent next year and it's but i can't see how they do they take that off i don't think they they can it's one of the things the government did previous government they turned around and said that to the the public that hold on instead of 2030 we're now going to go to 2035 and i do think there's lots of people my father-in-law at the time was and no disrespect to him i'm going to be in trouble here but said see electrics not right okay look even the government said we're going back to 2035 mark my words there'll be 2040 soon but they never took the targets off the manufacturers no add all there and that's why that um i don't think it was the smartest thing to the government at the time to do that because it just told the public that maybe this wasn't the root i think that caused a lot of the issue there as well yeah i mean it did and and you know it it wasn't the smartest thing for helping people make the switch to evs or for promoting evs um you know i just think it was it was smart from his point of view because he wanted to get votes and the votes that he was looking for were people who are yeah like i don't want to switch my car i don't want you technology i don't believe that in climate change you know those sorts of people that's who he was appealing to and that's what that announcement was designed to achieve it didn't make any difference to the manufacturers because they still have the steady zdv mandate that that saw that switch happening into 2030 and that that data those targets won't push back so and that's why it's easy for the labor government to sort of bring it back forward again because again it they're not really shifting anything because the manufacturers are all set up to to do that already yes and what well that's the thing it's a manifestation of takes what is it seven years development on a car it's not like what anyone does this week's going to affect what we're going to do next year now having said that Estelle at the moment when we're recording this the government's going to come out with the budget two weeks time so uh october budget so if you listen to this after this we have not made here what they're about to say there's lots of rumors out there but if labor reintroduces 2030 internal combustion engine the whole ice ban i don't know if they're going to do that or not what effect is that going to have especially the traditional manufacturers yeah i think it's going to it's going to help because there are people out there who are just like oh i don't know what's going on should i shouldn't i and if a government says no no no it's happening you know we're gonna ban petro-and-desal cars then there'll be people who are like okay fair enough when my next you know when i've next got to emotee my car or service my car that's the point i want to make the switch and and i'm going to do it it's going to take away that or is it or is it it the way we're going so um it would be i think it would be really helpful just around the narrative and that you know they did say in the manifesto that they're going to do that so yeah i mean who knows okay um so talk about the use cars over there um i i'm interested to think about um the supply of use cars getting used electric vehicles there there was a situation where there were the price kept on sliding and sliding and sliding um you're telling me that they're starting to turn around now getting used EVs the market stabilized is that fair to say it's definitely stabilized and in fact in the last couple of months um yeah pricing cars are going well over cap yeah we're definitely seeing a real strengthening i mean they're not going up as quickly as they did in you know 2021 when we were seeing component shortages on the retail side but certainly on the wholesale and trade side those prices are are climbing and and that will start filtering through to to the four-court soon yeah i mean the budget we're all waiting to see what happens in the budget uh i think they don't even necessarily need to incentivize people to buy EVs i think people just want the comfort to know that they are not going to be compromised by buying an EV they're genuinely i've had people say to me you know i'm really worried that that the government's going to decide to tax EVs um or you know not just road tax you know yes yes you know and you're just like don't understand what that's coming from but people people are afraid of course unknowing again is the unknown it's the unknown exactly so um and as i said earlier it's all about supply and demand and if um if this budget is EV positive or if it's um you know for example supposing they reduce the fuel duty discount on petrol which you know would fill quite a big hole for the government i think it i think that costs them sort of four or five billion pounds a year then there are lots of people who are like you know what i've had it with petrol not prepared pay any more on that i'm going to make the switch now so and we've seen that several times over the over the time because we've been trading since 2017 we have seen times where fuel duty has changed and we've also seen times where you know there were fuel shortages and actually one of the one of the strangest things i had was i had a lady pull it was at that fuel shortage time and i had a lady pull onto the forecourt it was about two o'clock in the afternoon and uh she said yeah um i've got no i've got no petrol in the car in my car and i am not queuing i'm not doing this anymore i've got a driveway and i want an electric car i have to leave here at 335 to pick my kids up from school get me one electric car by then and she was so long petrol so she's just dramatic it's not going to happen she's on the phone i don't care send them the money now i need and when i said what do you need what do you want she goes right it's got five seats and i got a dog to go in the back and it's whatever you've got there's got a hundred percent charge please and she literally drove off with electric car um i took the petrol i was here as a part exchange and i did have to go to you know get a grab because it was that low um so yeah i mean people get very emotional about uh the the price of petrol of course it's a big part of our um of our domestic budget oh yeah because i i suppose that was not the time to say actually it's best to charge it just to 80 percent okay it wasn't that she wasn't in the mood to listen to that was she no she's not there actually i love that i absolutely love that story so listen so we're talking about the challenges of getting stock so as a franchise dealership we've got the trade-in start coming through i suppose you're having to go to auctions to find cars do um do you have independence to underwrite cars to have lots of the dealers say so you're the expert on evs you sell lots of evs i imagine lots of people come to you for pricing on their on their trading as well yes so well we do sell those small family um you know specialists and and actually small family franchise dealerships as well that do sell their cars and look for under rights and and we have great great experiences with them and great relationships and um yeah and whether i'm underwriting a car or not you know i'm always happy to share my thoughts you know so i do get people who phone me and say you know what should i be looking for is you know what kind of money and even if you're not going to buy it what can you just give me a bit some pointers which yeah more than happy to do but i do think it's a shame that uh and so i don't come from motor trade so forgive my ignorance on how this has come about but i do find it a shame and astonishing to see how many cars just go through auction and it's not a great buying experience i'm not seeing an electric car you don't need to hear it so but still not being able to already see the car and paying that auction house all those fees i just i just think it's a real shame that we've lost that human element where people do what people and um and get cars underwritten and and yeah i would like to see way more of that than is currently obvious in the marketplace to myself where do you stock your cars from so if someone listened to this thinking uh i'm starting my own news car business whatever is it through auction what what percentage of business comes through there are you are you having to go to under the bca routes there or do you look at the car well and uh they're sourcing side of it do you look at motorways and uh we buy car what not we buy car course that's going to go to be bca yeah so um we do buy a fair bit from auction um just because what i've just said that that's where cars are going through at least companies tend to be pushing their cars through those as well but yeah equally love buying uh from platforms like motorway and car well because again you've got that human element and you can talk to people and i understand what worked about the car what didn't work about the car um so yeah i really enjoyed that and actually when i'm selling to people as well they quite like to understand where the car has come from and um just so we came out of a lease from a lease company is yes bit dull um but um yeah you know and so i do buy a lot from those platforms i like those platforms i am now buying from some of the lease company platforms that have been set up like um one length um and dealer auction actually you're doing a lot of stuff on that front so that's really helpful and we do buy from there as well it's a real mix and match i guess because back in 2017 electric cars were difficult to find you we spent a lot of time hunting and you you'd have to go you know anywhere and everywhere and all sorts to to buy and so we still we don't bulk at that and we still have that in our DNA i guess so and then also what's going to be for us is yeah getting part exchanges as well either you know we sold to customers some customers were on their third car from us you know they bought some little 22 kilowatt battery and then they upgraded that and now what we're seeing is people coming back and buying their main family car you know they're so confident with electric now that they're they're going fully electric in the household with with perhaps two electric cars in their homes so um i do get part exchanges through that which you know that's nice as well what about recondition i'm thinking that um all the technicians with manufacturers that go away with all the courses you've got the master tech they know all about the amount of space they need to leave around it and replace them the battery and our danger that is in the the independent world there did you find it hard for reconditioning to find technicians to work on electric vehicles now you you must have gone through that pain barrier because it's is there enough independent specials who can work on the electric vehicles so definitely a shortage and actually um you know a lot of the cars that i'm selling are still on hv battery warranties from the main dealers and the main dealers do not have enough hv yeah and if you've got a warranty repair it really want that done by the main dealer and don't want to bypass that and you have to wait sometimes which is is annoying and stressful so but you know having said that we are also selling some cars now that are coming out of battery warranty i mean you're not really seeing um huge amounts of battery failures if i'm honest mm-hmm so and a lot of the the stuff on the car can be worked on by a normal normal technician so you know suspension components but i mean i suppose the most common thing is for the air conditioning system so the compressor or whatever to fail and that is part of the hv drivetrain it's often not covered under the manufacturers hv battery warranty because it's not the battery that's failed it's it's something to do with the the cabin air system and yeah finding technicians who can who can work on those i mean they are all busy busy people who can pick up what they do but you know having said that we've got a couple of fabulous people that that we work with um who are real specialists and we've been working with for quite a few years now and um yeah and they're good and they don't get gropped in and looking because yeah that's true that's true it's um again i'm mototrayed from 17 and i started in the uh in the workshop there and it was grease everywhere now it's a laptop okay it really is a different world there but as an industry get the technicians we just have really struggled um there's uh any dealer listen this is um groaning at the moment because that really is uh such an issue now listen we've found every vehicle okay the Chinese are i was going to say coming no the Chinese are here okay mg is uh just paid a huge dividend uh the number of cars they were selling is going from strength to strength you've got uh there's so many offers coming out uh with the Chinese so you can't keep up with all of them there and they're driving a price down on the entry level to EVs um is that going to have a knock-in-fact on the traditional the forwards the voluswagans and so forth are they going to uh eat into that chair and the reason why i ask that is driving our electric vehicle is sometimes if you can jump into uh the mg you can go and jump into a Porsche tie-can you can go and jump south electric motors electric motor a battery is a battery um i suppose what i'm asking what impact are the Chinese going to have on the market well that yeah million dollar question it is isn't it um but i can talk about what kind of i can talk about you know our thoughts and and what we're seeing so they are coming in with things that are cheaper but and that's great because it opens it up to more consumers and it's also great because it will push the traditional manufacturers to to be really efficient and cost effective in the way they're producing their cars but you know um just like i don't know i was thinking about this last night you know in preparation for today and i guess there are three star hotels and there are five star hotels and um there's a place in the market for for three star hotels and there's a place in the market for five star hotels and you know it's just no different with cars because if you want a five star then you're going to go for something that's you know from a traditional manufacturer and is really well thought through and and has beautiful finishes and enhanced sound systems has software that has been through so much testing that the car's not going to be at you every five seconds cars that have been developed for uk roads i mean this is one of the things that you know i hear a lot of criticism you know tesla face a lot of criticism actually in the early years because their um driver assistance systems were just bleeping a lot and and reacting if you like and i don't think they were overreacting if you were driving on american roads because that's you know where the the developers were developing and then they brought out a big sort of software update but for uk the uk cars and that made a big difference so you know manufacturers that are used to uk style of driving and have developed their software accordingly you know they have amazing products but you know equally that's not for everyone not everyone wants that not everyone even people who could perhaps afford a Porsche might not actually want to suspend the money on a car they might want to spend money on other things in their life you know yeah it's not necessarily better and it doesn't necessarily follow that if you can afford it that you want to so there will always be a place for different um different price points and and different um yeah different models and different vehicles um and so you know from a consumer and consumer championing point of view um i welcome the the edge of new of new producers but can i just say the one thing that isn't great from a consumer point of view is that these cars are coming into the uk without a network that can support them and without a full set of manuals in english that means that the technicians can easily diagnose what's wrong with your car work out what it needs and and repair it in a quick way and without established uh logistic paths for parts and so whilst the car you know might be great inevitably at some point you know it's a car they all go wrong at some point in their lives um you need support you need to be able to take it in and this is where someone has established manufacturers uh and those you know that are based in europe really are amazing because you take the car in and they can decide today maybe tomorrow what's wrong with it and then the part for it is here perhaps the next day and and you're back on the road whereas what we're hearing from some of the from those chinese manufacturers is that you know there's a shortage of technicians working on them you might have to go a long way to get to a service center um it may take them ages to get the parts the part that they fit might then not um fix the problem you know and and as they get more established in the uk then they'll get there absolutely they'll get that i suppose byd is um one of the biggest manufacturer electric vehicles now overtook tesla um i think it was quite funny that elon musk uh ten years ago was asked about byd and he laughed he said have you seen their cars look how ugly they are maybe not the smartest thing that he said at the time because byd is definitely going straight to strength uh ng in the uk um but i suppose um even tesla when they first come in there were problems to start with with the a dealer network out there and i think very very quickly that's changing it's um be interesting to see with the tariffs now we know that europe is putting tariffs on the chinese chinese specifically electric vehicles and we don't know what's going to happen with the election in america but the man out there said he's talking about 400 tariffs on electric vehicles and i understand the uk has come out and said we're not going to put tariffs on chinese electric vehicles i i just don't know if tariffs is the right thing to put on these cars coming in i just think i yeah i agree with you and i am concerned particularly from a consumer perspective um on what yeah whether that's going to lead to uh you know poor behaviors or or um poor products on the you on you know on markets that we're going to get political here but i think tariffs always make someone weak okay you put tariffs on someone doesn't have to try as hard they don't have to develop as hard it's a protected market um that we're getting very political here still but and listen we don't know who's going to win the election in america but we just i know tariffs are definitely full steam ahead for europe on chinese specific and different levels but i understand you will probably just have a bit of a short term a short term effect i don't know i again call me cynical but i think they just find ways around it you know so all of a sudden well i mean maybe this is a positive because maybe what it's going to push those chinese manufacturers to do is to open plants that either assemble or do a sufficient enough work in europe or whatever in the territory in which they do not want to have tariffs imposed on in order to be able to classify the car as you know from that territory so maybe i don't know i'm not a political person but you know maybe they will you know stimulate a whole bunch of different behaviors from different people and have consequences that you know may also have some positives out of them as well but that doesn't mean i'm not saying that i'm supporting the introduction of tariffs but um i'm just saying that um you know i noticed for example that uh like pole star it's a chinese chinese car although swedish engineered and they still have a lot of or indeed development and engineering functions in Scandinavia and um and certainly the pole stars that we were um selling uh that i was coming in a couple of years ago you know their thins were indicating that they were chinese cars chinese made and that hasn't changed in terms of where these cars are made in the assembled but their bins on the newer ones coming in uh are european bins so it's quite funny too um the the teslas i'm going back a while now the chinese teslas were actually built quite well compared to the american ones i would have a chinese tesla over an american one yeah how do you call it uh all day long is that i mean it's a lot of these cars are coming from man you know really established yeah and you call manufacturers you know they're not new manufacturers no they're at all just they're new to us we're just new to us i i'd never heard of some of these brands but of course they're massive but just uh new to me uh like great wall you think who is great wall uh who is build your dream it sounds just quite funny doesn't it but it's um uh big manufacturers so i i want to ask about the future of electric vehicles okay um is it sustainable lots of people talk about battery production and can we keep producing these batteries the environmental impact on producing the batteries okay um that's got a big concern is it sustainable are we going to go biofuels is it going to be hydrogen i want to get your views as can electricity take us where we need to as a planet well i think again people just listening to this i can see the look on a self-space all the time there you can say well i love this i've got i obviously i don't have the answers but i'm just going to give you our thoughts and our understanding you know we are not a battery scientist we're not scientists at all um i'm definitely not so let's remember that yes um so just going back to basics let's think about electricity electricity is widely available it's easily transportable down just wires all around the country it's already there it's already established um it's very easy to tap into it hydrogen is not and hydrogen would need to be transported it's compressed yes um so for it to be a domestic solution you know quite frankly it seems a bit like going backwards because you're going to have to go somewhere to fill up with your hydrogen car whereas with an alert with a lithium ion battery you can just plug it in at home and you know charge it up overnight where we all know there's quite a bit of surplus electricity in the UK and i think that will continue particularly as we move into renewables you know it seems to be windier at night than during the day and you know there's wind turbines are turning let's let's use that electricity when that's happening so um so i think from that point of your electricity you know lithium ion batteries that are fuel by electricity really makes sense for consumers and just cars for long-term for long commercial vehicles and heavy goods traffic i don't think my personal view is that that should move to hydrogen um and you know those hubs where those where those heavy goods vehicles fill up and go out um they can have hydrogen making centers there so they can they're not having to transport it they can actually make it happen but the problem we've got with hydrogen right now is that it takes more electricity for every kilowatt you get out of hydrogen than from you know the lithium ion battery in electric cars so yeah so i can't see you know in the next sort of 10 to 15 years but the average man and woman on the peckamomne bus is going to be an electric car but you know in in 30 years time are we going to be driving around uh they'll probably will be electric cars but will they be fueled by a lithium ion battery uh i suspect technology will will absolutely move on and the other thing i would say is that i know that in terms of battery chemistry there are strides being made all the time in and and what they're trying to do and they are achieving is to have sort of synthetic sources of some of the chemical elements in there so that they don't have to come from our planet so that they are more sustainably produced um you know for example we've already got um batteries widely available that don't have cobalt in them so i didn't realize that because that cobia was one that really worried me about stripping forests and so forth so it's a now there's lithium ion that doesn't need cobalt is that right yes that's my understanding again i am not a person sorry many of them i have met them on my colonies and that's that is that's great use because i again i i've always i love the idea of electricity for the environment i i really do but i i was was worried about the destruction to get some of these materials they needed and i think and i think to be fair that there are um you know battery manufacturers who are also worried about that how many can be easy to do um from a reputation point of view it's your own and i fed you all the time but also you know it's it's not cheap and easy to produce when you've got to go to those lengths so there are going to be commercial drivers but doing it better and more in a way that's more environmentally friendly and um yeah i know that they're working as hard on that as they are on uh getting them as efficient as possible and as much range as as possible that's it so listen someone listening to this what advice do you have to the the salesperson the sales measure that comes in what advice do you have them for dealing with a customer the customers i was going to say are they different you might not know because you've always dealt with electric customers okay but what advice would you have for that salesperson about how to deal with the first time electric customer well i would say you need patience and good listening skills so um i someone told me the other day that the average time between inquiry and purchase of a petrol second-hand car is 72 hours that's the average time that people make the decision whether to buy a petrol car or not in the second-hand market and that is uh you're looking sort of three weeks um at least uh for sometimes i'm sure for more i mean i have yeah so i have customers who first came to me six months ago even 12 months ago um i mean quite often people make a switch because of an event uh quite often it's an MOT failure and then they want me to take their MOT pile of something but um thank you for that yeah so um but yeah so you you you you do have to approach it that you're not the chances of you selling the car this week um when they've come in for the first time that you've met them or spoken to them or whatever are less than 50 percent i would say and so therefore you just yeah you need to have system in place to better keep in touch with them keep that rolling and ultimately you know if you're good at that then you will be rewarded with the sale in the end isn't the sale so much holding hands it's about it starts off with that do i really have to charge at night do i have to go out my dressing gown and take it out of the plug out at nighttime when i do that no the app can do that for you what charger do i get and it's so many times it's all those conversations before you talk about the car yeah and i guess that's what's something that doesn't immediately occur to me because i didn't come from Motatray before but i think just talking to customers on how they're moaning about other experiences they've had in other places i think that's the thing is that everyone wants the conversation to be around the car because nobody talks about petrol where you're going to get it from but actually a whole chunk of the conversation has to be around um range we car dealers okay we we would never say okay so what you're going to do is first you get this petrol pump and you take the green run out and what you do is you pick it up and you you put it in this little door okay and then what you do is you pull the little handle up and nothing happens so you have to wave at the window to some browser on his phone to allow you to put petrol in it we don't do that because it's taken for granted but the first time ev people want to know things like do i have to go out in the middle of the night how do i charge it at the night time what happens if it's on the side of the road and some of the things customers say what if someone just wants a power and goes off and starts charging in their car all the stuff that you're smiling now because you take it for granted but that's where the conversation starts with first time adopters earlier adopters i suppose yeah early majority and and you know when we had early adopters they tended to be people who uh you know said a bit techie and so they would have done their own research they were in that mindset that's how they operate about everything that they buy you know and you know probably if you're trying to sell them big beans they would have researched it be able to tell you the chemical competition.
Martin's the early adopter is he you said that before yes yes but the early majority they don't really want to do all that research that's not that's not necessarily how they operate that's not how they buy things they need someone to just explain it to them in simple terms give them the confidence that they can do it and then they'll start going okay well i've got a dog crate that needs to go in the back. So i was just thinking though end of life are these vehicles okay so normally we deal with franchise dealerships so they buy the car new the first cycle three to four years down the track and there's a second maybe a third cycle and is there a real issue with the breakers of these electric vehicles and is it going to be a real issue with the i don't know the chemicals in these batteries getting into streams and the environment well i mean the same way as petron diesel um breakers are licensed to do to um to operate you know i'm sure it'd be the same and they'll have regulations and requirements around how they dispose of things but um there are now a couple of EV breakers um working in the UK and i'm sure they're doing a roaring trade because there aren't many of them um you have to remember that batteries are modular so you can break them down into the different cells and the other thing i'm seeing is these EV specialists of which there are much more than EV breakers but EV specialists they are also taking batteries and able to recondition them and and then put them back together and then perhaps back into a different vehicle so yeah i mean it's obviously it's still a bit early days from that point of view because you know the first EVs that we had were 2010 with the Mitsubishi iMiv and then into 2011 so mr.
Bishie i'm mr. I thought the leaf was the first one mr. Bishie mr. Bishie iMiv also available as a section uh cesarean i think it was called on the perjo ion so a little sphicca very you know but yeah change that thing but yeah yeah actually for a short journeys small batteries sort of that's a range now but um the experiences with those which people are now starting to have because they're getting to 15 years old but um yeah i mean it's early days isn't it for breaking? Yeah it is 2011 i suppose the leaf 2011 it shocked you actually it wasn't that long ago really and what's happened i even like old classic cars i see the other day that old jaguars and old porsches they're putting tesla powertrains in and so forth and it's um it's amazing lots of different things that happen there around the EV world yeah and it's it's going to be interesting to see which of these generation are going to be like the iconic sort of classic of the future i don't think it will be the Mitsubishi iMiv personally yeah i mean i do wonder about the BMW i3 i mean they were iconic they're and i feel mean because obviously in this and well did this sound then we down early in the sand leaf with the sort of look which you know you either loved or hated you loved it because you had one yeah i did but um i mean ultimately the the BMW i3 was you know pretty all really pioneering as well and you know iconic and it's looks and even now they're not making them anymore but even now they stay on my forecourt for such a short period of time whenever i'm getting them in they are still really popular i love your website where you've got all your team and what Martin likes to drive he's in the pole star because he likes that what you like to drive okay i love how you've got your team there and it's that personal side of it as well which which is really good as tell this i've really enjoyed that how do people find you so if someone wants you to i don't know you want some astell to buy some cars from you you've got some trade ins coming through there what's the easiest way for people to reach out and find you well i mean always cool obviously i love love talking to people but ev experts just go to ev experts online is that the website so i go to our website our phone number and obviously is there but also you know if you want to just sort of yeah if you want to submit uh sell my ev and just list there what it is and then say you've got a form that you can fill in name email address phone number what the car is and then if you just put in the car description a time that's what good for you for one of us to come back to you with an underite or with help or whatever then yep we'll we'll do that absolutely brilliant astell i really appreciate that thank you very much for coming on the podcast thank you thank you for having me that just leaves me to say that all details of this episode and other episodes on the selling in the motor trade can be found on our website simko training dot co dot uk go there to get a copy of our book words that sell cars go there to sign up to a free trial of our sales fitness online sales training program easiest way to get hold of me is Simon Bowkett through linked in thank you
