Battery health now beats mileage for used EVs. I sit down with Oliver Phillpott (Generational) to cut the noise and show you how state of health (SOH) drives value, trust, and stock turn.
What you’ll learn
- The battery factors that actually move price, and how to explain them simply to buyers.
- Practical SOH thresholds dealers use to retail vs trade.
- PHEV vs EV: different degradation patterns and what they mean on appraisal.
- Warranty basics, servicing pitfalls, and when to test anyway.
- The battery health report: the one-pager that reduces returns and speeds up the sale.
If you’re a dealer principal, used-car manager, buyer, or seller of EVs and looking to tighten your EV process. Press play and share this with your sales and buying teams.
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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 visitwww.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, welcome to another episode of Selling and the Motor Trade. Today I'm with Oli Filper. Now Oli is from Generation, and we're going to be talking all things electric vehicles, and more importantly, the health of a used electric vehicle's battery.
You see, there's lots of people talking about, ah, do I want to get involved with selling used cars which are electric? That's kind of stopped now because, you know what, if you're not selling electric vehicle, we haven't got anything to sell. But you know what, there's still some of the end-pence out there like, oh, I'm nervous about it. Should I do it? Consumers are might be nervous. And there's so much just speaking to Oli before we've clicked record here that I've learned about the health of a battery. So that's what we're going to be talking about today. Oli, welcome aboard. Thanks, Skippy. Yeah, really happy to be here, and thank you for having me. So listen, can we start off with people who might not know you?
What led you to focus on electric vehicle batteries, not just electric vehicles, but actual batteries and co-founding generation away? I understand from your team's background, include some high-end automotive engineering. I believe Formula One, I think that's right. Yeah, a little bit of that. Yeah, okay. So tell me about your journey. How did you get to starting generation? So I started life out as a software engineer actually, building software for the automotive leasing companies. So I worked for a company that counted Mercedes-Benz financial services, Toyota Financial Services as customers. It sort of provided them with the heart and lungs of their software. So I've sort of been around automotive for a long time, and then found myself working for a startup after that company became quite big, and I decided to go and do something a bit more, roll your sleeves up, and ended up managing an electric fleet.
And it was a very operational fleet. And battery issues, we were working with early generation EVs, and battery issues were something that we had to contend with, right? And when it's your operation, like it's all about uptime and deliveries and making sure that you can keep the wheels of the business turning. So battery issues were something that was very much on my radar, and I knew about it from the world of leasing, like what was happening to residual values and this big shift towards EV. So actually what happens, I met my co-founder to be Russian, who had this amazing background from his PhD, and his time at Red Bull Racing. I was going to ask you, who was, which Formula One team?
So it's Red Bull Racing. And there's also a lot of batteries in F1. And we just sort of looked at each other and said, look, there's got to be a way to make the condition of the battery transparent, right? So like, make it super easy. So anyone can assess the condition of the battery, because we knew it was like up to 50% of the value of these cars was tied in the battery. So it was going to be fundamental to a lot of the decision making throughout the kind of the lifecycle of these big expensive assets. Yeah, okay. So do you remember the first electric vehicle's battery that you guys ever tested or assessed or whatever you say?
So how did that work out? I think it was my own car, to be honest. So we spent a lot of time, like basically filling around and then garage with it, right? Like trying to understand how I was working and like looking at the battery and stuff like that. So because I bought a used electric car without a battery health check. And I was a bit unsure at the time, but like that was really our kind of test bed. We did a load of like the first work of our product building or on my car, basically, genuinely like shed garage like entrepreneur guys. Okay. So buying a used electric vehicle without a check, I'm sure you wouldn't advise anyone to do that now though, right?
Yeah, not now I've seen like, you know, it was just also a question of, at that point, we could plug into the vehicle, we could kind of get it, we could understand the condition a bit. But no, I think like given that the option is now available, I think I would definitely opt for buying a vehicle with a battery health check if you're buying used, you know, it's an even even new right there. There's a lot of new stock that's like sat at the port still like isn't being sold. So yeah, it's definitely something I would recommend now and also looking at some of our data on like how batteries are performing generally, they're much, much better than people expect, right?
But there is a small percentage of vehicles that have been used in like sub-optimal way or whose batteries are degrading faster than than you might expect. Well, listen, trolling through your website before this, you actually mentioned there that mileage doesn't really matter for an electric vehicle, the performance, the longevity, the value of the car is determined by the most expensive component, that's the battery. So how do you explain this shift in thinking to a traditional dealer? In practice, what should a sales manager, someone like me, we know I'm a praise electric vehicle, if mileage is taking that back to sea to batch off, what should I start looking for? Yeah, it is a as important question for for dealers, but in the whole, the whole trade, right?
Because major mileage have been the things that really are fundamental to valuing cars for like 100 years, right? But the fact is for an electric car, there's many fewer moving parts, right? So the mileage plays much less of a role in terms of the assessment in my mind, right? Like really, it's about is the battery, then the main component of value in good condition, right? And also, I think another thing you're thinking about, if you're appraising a car, one coming in on part exchange, right, is like, does it have a full service history, right? Does that mean that the manufacturer warranty on the battery is still valid, right? Because you've got to think about the fees and fees of the manufacturer warranty.
A lot of, you know, generally they're offering eight year, 100,000 mile warranties, but think about that. And then I'd really be thinking about the condition of the battery, right? Like if the battery has any serious issues, it's very expensive, often to fix. And you know, you could have money tied up in that asset, it's all about shifting the stock quickly, right? And that would be why I'd be thinking about first and foremost, just de-risking yourself when you take the vehicle in on part exchange or buying it in stock, doing a battery health check, and then also looking at the conditions of warranty. Okay. Listen, there's lots of talks about batteries being worn out. And I suppose it's maybe my generation, you think of mobile phone, okay, after five, six years down the track, it's not holding any charge anymore.
I use electric toothbrush, okay, and they're great for the first three months. And then the battery just wears out, because you throw it out by another one, because they want like 60, 80 quid, something like that there. Okay. But I still some data, again, from your website, I think it was, suggesting that batteries degrade 0.8%. Is that right? I think 1.8, 1.8% a year on average is what we've seen. And generally, so are they holding up a lot better than what people are being expect? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Battery in your car is a dime very differently to the battery in your phone, right? Like on my iPhone, you know, after three years, it's like almost struggling to get through the end of the day, right?
Like, yeah. A car's battery is built completely differently, right? And they are, you know, they degrade much lower, they are very, very well built. My car is a 71 plate. It's done about 44,000 miles. And the battery health is just under 94% by 93%, I think, no, it's two and a half. And what's a good benchmark then? What should I look for for great benchmark for say a three year old car? Or is that a hard thing just to give it a number? It depends a little bit on the, on the type of vehicle, right? Some degrade a little bit faster than others. Typically, we've, we've tended to see the bigger, more powerful cars, batteries degrade slightly faster.
You know, they're heavier things, they're more, more power required to move them. But there is an element of variation. Really, most of it comes down to how the vehicle's been used, right? Has that car been stored up? The battery's been stored at 100% all the time. Has it been rapid charge? Depth of discharge is something that we talked about, get a little bit more scientific, which is like, am I cycling the battery all the way up to 100% and then all the way back down to zero? Or is it a battery likes to have a nice life for a battery is like hovering around 40 to 60% all the time, right? So all of these things can affect how quickly the battery deprates, but absolutely.
And in the main, the vast majority of vehicles are performing much better than people expect. So, Ollie, we're talking about electric vehicles, okay? But what about hybrids? Do I need to test the battery on a hybrid or is it just not worth doing really? It's, I suppose it's just the electric vehicle pure EV, someone to go worry about, right? Not entirely true, actually. Firstly, on a pumpkin hybrid, the battery is still an expensive bit of kit, right? So I would very much also be considering those. If you think about it as well, on a pumpkin hybrid, the usage profile can be very different to full electric. You might have someone who only drives it on the battery.
You might have someone who leaves that battery dead, right? Like 0% and never uses it at all. So it's quite common to actually see higher degradation on so true hybrids batteries, right? And they're still expensive things. I think there's an important thing to know as well, particularly as we retail, right, is that really when you're talking about battery testing and state of health, because things like that, you're in the world of any vehicle with a plug, right? Like rather than mild hybrids, right? We're talking about high voltage traction batteries, the ones where you can solely drive the car based on the battery, right? Rather than where it's a small low voltage battery to assist the power of the acceleration, et cetera, right?
So really, when we're talking about battery testing, we're talking about any car with a plug. It's so true what you said about those plug-in hybrids. Some people will just run it around town on the electric charge all the time. But then again, when I had one, I was guilty of lugging around a big heavy battery, which I never charged. And you don't know who the customer is, I suppose. Maybe it's more important sometimes. Oh, no. Yeah. And so as I said, it's common to see higher degradation on a fat. Yeah, interesting. Interesting. Okay. Well, 2023, there was a report that a car was about 90,000 miles on it. Okay. So again, 90,000 miles, I'm sure that's maybe a car that lots of our dealers would be retailing anyway.
But even at 90,000 miles, that battery is retaining 86% of its battery capacity. But if we could just go back to 2016, which is not that long ago, with similar mileage, they were averaging around 75%. So that tells me battery technology is getting a lot, lot better. So the question I have, okay, does that mean the newer car is going to devalue a lot more gracefully? Because let's be honest, some used vehicle valuations, I mean, they were horrendous. The new electric vehicle is going to devalue slalah in your opinion. Yeah, it's a good question. There's probably a couple of things going on here, right? To pick apart. One is, there are improvements in battery technology, right?
And it's changing all the time. And it's really cool. Some of the new stuff that's happening. So I think also, some of those early generation vehicles overrepresented by the Nissan Leaf and the Renault ZOE, right? And particularly some of the early generation Leafs that didn't have the same cooling technology, you would see slightly faster degradation. When it does come to battery chemistry, age has a slightly higher impact than mileage, right? So calendar aging is a fact of battery degradation. You can't quite escape it, really. So a lot of our customers actually are doing great business selling slightly higher mileage EV. There's still relatively young. A few months ago, though, I think there's a load of taxis that came off of fleet.
And our customers were buying up these VW ID4s, right? Because they've ended still very young. The battery, they might have done 80,000, 90,000 miles. But sold with a battery helm check, they just look like insane value at the moment. Because at the moment, the valuations aren't yet updated to take into account the condition of the battery, right? So like you're selling a VW ID4 for some 10,000 pounds, it's done 80,000 miles. It just looks like it's such an insane buy, right? So these things were flying. I was in a land Rover business last week and the eyepace. I mean, there's a lot of car. And it was starting with 20,000. And you think, I don't know what that car was new, but it must have been, I don't know, 60, 80, something like that.
But it was so much car. But the same thing with that ID4 range. Okay. If you can sell that for 12s, are you serious? That sort of figure that was something for? Yeah, I think some of the ones that were just over 100,000 miles that were were subbed in K from memory. Wow. And so I had customers who were just buying ID4s, right? Like in Bockit, I mean, I think it's still happening, right? Like young high mileage, like it just looks like such insane value, right? There are also just great cars all around, right? Like very responsive acceleration, like quiet, packed full of tech. You know, you've got gap on your phone, you can control it remotely.
Loads of cool stuff. Okay. So listen, let's talk about the battery warranty versus testing. Okay. And of course, that's what you do. But if most electric batteries have got a what is it? 800,000 mile warranty or something like that. If you listen to this in Australia, America or Ireland, it's whatever that is in kilometers 100,000 miles, I'm trying to think the kilometers are 160,000 kilometers, I think something like that there. If it's under warranty, is it not just safe to, okay, take the car in, why do we check on it at all? Or should dealers still make sure they go through the checks on that battery? Yeah, it's a good question. I think like comes down to whether, you know, if it does have a slightly worse off battery, is that something that you want to retail?
A lot of our customers will set a minimum retail threshold. You know, even if it is still within the conditions of the warranty, it's potentially going to be a little bit harder to sell. And, you know, you're potentially thinking about saving yourself from some of the headaches that may come down the line, right? From selling a car with slightly lower range, all that kind of thing. So I think I'd absolutely still do the check. And also, as well as the warranty, you just want to be checking the servicing history on the vehicle, right? You want to check that that warranty is about it. Yeah. Again, a lot of people listening to this will be franchise dealers, okay?
And I suppose, is this an opportunity for us to make sure that customers are servicing to a franchise dealership for the next eight years? Okay, is that something? Now, again, the independence list of this is screaming me at the moment and saying that, but how will that work with the service history? Do we have to have the full service history for the eight years for a manufacturer to accept the warranty of eight years on the battery? Yeah, this is where I think it's important to get into the terms and conditions by the detailed right of the other terms and conditions of the warranty. Generally speaking, you shouldn't have to have service history from the main dealer.
I think consumers have rights in the UK where they can get service anywhere. But, you know, the servicing has to be correct and adhere to the right processes, right? So absolutely, though, in answer to your question, this is a reason why every retailer should be encouraging people buying an EV to get on the servicing plan, right? Because it's not just anymore thinking about, you know, the three year warranty that the customer part is the battery, right? And on a new car, battery can easily cost 20k, right? So like, yeah, that's the cost of, you know, bringing a car in for servicing every couple of years. It's like, it just absolutely makes sense. Yeah. So if your own mother, father, brother, sister was buying an electric car, you would definitely say just service it through a franchise dealership every single time.
Just don't take the risk of saving a bit. I mean, look, a lot of our customers are independent. You can absolutely go through the independent network. It's really about keeping up to date with your efficiency requirements, right? When the car tells you, get it done, right? Yeah. Yeah. I've got Eumesh at the moment from the IMDA in the UK, he's screaming at the radio at the moment saying, no, independence to a good job as well. But just make sure you stick to that manufacturer's serving schedule. And they've got all the service history is there. That's what you've really said, okay. And listen, do you think there's a need for maybe an industry wide battery health testing scheme to any other country?
I know the UK has an moment to other countries around the world have a government based and industry body, a universal battery health report or anything like that. There's not much out there, to be honest. There's one initiative in mainland Europe, months from the remarketing association. But really, it's not mandated anywhere. And I think there's some talk about, like, you know, because of the future of what they have to make more data available, essentially, for the owner. But we're many years away from that coming in, and then, you know, or particularly those vehicles hitting the roads, right? So the answer is in terms of standardization, not a lot, unfortunately. We would love to, you know, we're pushing for it.
I think my sense is, from kind of the UK government point of view, that there isn't much appetite or capacity at the moment. But we would love, you know, we would love this to be part of like, bit like an APC certificate on your house, right? Yeah. We're pushing for it. But as with anything, these things take time. Okay. So, listen, I think most people listen to this. I seem to serve a, might have been on your website, that 78% of dealers believe that battery health is a central consideration, but most electric vehicles are dealerships moving fast enough to integrate the battery health check into their routines. Okay. What's the risk for a dealer who don't adopt this, just ignoring the transparency?
Are they putting themselves out of that disadvantage? Competitive disadvantage? Is it going to damage the trust that have with their customer? The key point is that, given the choice, people tend to prefer to know the condition of what they're buying, right? So, the risk is, if you can't give the customer that information, then the risk is it today, you may lose the sale, right? Like, particularly amongst customers you're asking. And the number one reason that dealers cite when they come to us as a reason why they're inquiring is because consumers are asking to know the condition of the battery, right? Well, I see research, 62% of consumers who were actually held off buying an electric vehicle because the concern is about the health of the battery.
So, we need to actually make this, it's an educational piece, isn't it, for the customer as well, to let them know. In fact, going one stage further, are there still lots of myths out there versus reality? I'll give you an example, my father-in-law, okay? And so, oh, don't buy one of those electric vehicles. And we're an electric car family. I have a nice vehicle myself. My wife Emma, she drives an electric car and she loves it. She wouldn't go back. But they came home, father-in-law said, oh, you wouldn't park that in the car, which it's going to catch fire. I mean, the whole looting thing, people who know I've listened to this in the UK, looting the airport, had a car parked that caught fire.
How many cars got burnt in that? God knows, honestly, I don't know. But, I mean, the story was, right, that is an electric car battery fire, right? It wasn't, though, right? It was a Range Rover. Exactly, exactly. But, again, how quickly did the press say, an electric vehicle caught fire? That's that the myths out there. Is it still out there, do you think? Absolutely. Look, I won't cite the kind of the newspapers, the pedalist stuff. But also, it's just the nature of media, right? Like, bad sensation in this news travels faster. And I think companies like Generation have got to do a better job of telling the story that actually it's okay, right? We do a lot.
We put a lot of our data up there, right? And I think you've seen that from your website. Great. Yeah. That's actually, you know, batteries are performing really well. But probably the challenge for us is to do that in a sexier way, right? Because like, how can I compete with like, you know, papers putting out stories on, you know, sensationalised car fire? So it's on us to tell a sexier story, right, about these cars and the fact that... How can I get back and back again? Okay, so sure, they're not blowing up, okay? Listen, we're on batteries, what's in our phone? We carry around in our pocket and it's right to our ear and all that sort of stuff.
But there is another myth that the flames are fanned actually by misinformation. And that is, is the battery just going to die, okay? You said before that the average battery, it's 1.8%, I think you said per year. Is there really going to be a concern that this battery is going to die? Because the age of a car, how long do people keep a car for anyway? Yeah, in a lot of cases, and eerie, like the battery will outlive the vehicle, right? And I... that battery still has value beyond the life of the vehicle. There are companies out there today, I was at an event a couple of weeks ago, they take batteries out of vehicles and put them in stationary storage to provide energy flexibility back to the electricity grid, right?
Wow, I didn't realise that there is still a use when we can't get... What's a dead battery for us? Anything below, I don't know, is it 70% we wouldn't look at retail? The most common one you'd see, a lot of our... I mean, a lot of our customers set a minimum retail threshold at like the most common one I see is 80%, they might not want to read better anything below 80. I also have... I know some who said it at 90 if they're selling newer stock. But you've also got to think that potentially that battery has another life beyond the life inside the car. And there's some really cool companies doing like manufacturing of batteries, but also putting them in other use cases.
Yeah, of course, 40% might be great for whatever the other use to do. So it's something I never thought about, really. So there is a whole market. If you're just switching it on for short periods of time to sell a little bit of electricity back to the grid, when the wind's not blowing or the sun's shining, right? Or to maintain... The electricity grid has to operate within very fine parameters, right? So there's use cases like that that mean that these batteries can continue to have a very long night? Yeah, so it's not like saying 12 years down the track, that's just written off anyway, that car's dead, go and scrap it. But again, actually an internal combustion engine car, when it gets to 12 to 15 years, how many of those are still on the road?
And actually, what happens to that internal combustion engine? That just gets crushed on guessing? Yeah, look, these guys have got a lot of complex things to figure out, right? Moving batteries around is different from basically an old ice car. You basically just crush it, right? Yeah. It's a bit different from an electric car. And the flip side of that is that there's parts in the vehicle that will still be quite bad, right? So it's going to be an interesting supply chain and value chain as this market evolves. And it's already happening, right? There are companies already doing this. That just leads 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 simcotraining.co.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 LinkedIn. Thank you.
