Dealers, brands, and tech all collide as Ian Plummer (Auto Trader) breaks down what Cardiola Live revealed: Chinese “new entry” brands are winning fast thanks to value-rich products, long warranties, and rapid network rollout—plus strong conversion on Auto Trader. AI is becoming a productivity tool for sourcing, CRM, and even outbound engagement. Market confidence looks steadier than 2022, but supply and sourcing remain tough. The news round-up covers Stellantis & You’s near-£48m loss, Bentley job cuts tied to tariff pressure, and Close Brothers’ finance-compensation fallout.
"The Cardiola podcast is sponsored by Autotrader. John, have you ever wondered why I, along with 14,000 other dealers, choose to partner with Autotrader?"
Autotrader is a popular UK website where people look for cars. Dealers use it to get their cars in front of buyers and to generate enquiries.
Autotrader is a UK online marketplace and advertising platform for car dealers. In this segment, it’s positioned as a way for dealers to reach shoppers and generate leads through its website traffic and dealer packages.
"And now, with the launch of buying signals, we'll have brand new insights on every deal, showing how likely a customer is to buy the car they're interested in."
“Buying signals” are clues from data that suggest whether someone is likely to actually buy a car they’re looking at. It helps dealers focus on the leads that look most serious.
“Buying signals” refers to data-driven indicators that estimate how likely a shopper is to buy the specific car they’re viewing. The idea is to help dealers prioritize leads and tailor follow-up based on intent rather than just clicks.
"...y stood out was the one I hosted with the Chinese Challenger Brands. I think after this, I'm going to stop ca..."
The Dodge Challenger is a sporty car that’s built for strong acceleration and a loud, performance-style driving feel. It’s popular with people who want a muscle car look and power. It might be discussed because it’s a well-known model that many buyers recognize.
The Dodge Challenger is a classic American muscle car known for its powerful V8 options and long-running, performance-focused design. It often comes up in dealer and enthusiast discussions because it’s a recognizable nameplate with strong demand for both new and used examples. In a podcast context, it may be mentioned as a standout model tied to broader brand and product strategy talk.
"They can still make a success of this UK market if tariffs came along... tariff thing hasn't stopped them in Europe to put tariffs in European, in the European Union on at variable levels on different brands on EVs."
Tariffs are extra taxes on imported cars. If they’re added to EVs, some cars become more expensive, which can change which brands sell well.
Tariffs are taxes added to imported goods. In the EV context, tariffs can be used to raise the cost of imported vehicles or components, influencing which brands can compete in a market like the UK or the EU.
"[602.5s] And people are talking about the more social proof is a big factor as well. [605.9s] James, isn't it?"
Social proof is the effect where people are more likely to trust and act when they see others endorsing a product. The segment argues that for Chinese brands, word-of-mouth and peer experiences can significantly boost enquiry and purchase intent.
"We included Tesla in that, the new entry player at the time that was the biggest one. We don't include them now."
Tesla is an electric car company. The speaker is saying Tesla was once the biggest example of a “new entrant” that grew quickly, but they’re not counting it the same way now.
Tesla is an EV brand that the speaker calls out as a major “new entry player” earlier in the market. The point is that Tesla’s early growth shaped expectations for how quickly new EV brands could gain share.
Term
AI
"And I had a couple of chats with with George Manning the night before from from Hilton and some of the stuff that they're doing with AI was amazing. ... He had this sort of had this message system like he could text it basically an AI system and said how many cars we sold today."
They’re talking about using “AI” software to do tasks automatically. Here, it helps a dealer get answers fast—like sales numbers or vehicle history—without doing it by hand.
In this segment, AI is being used as a dealer tool to automate information requests and responses. Instead of manually pulling data, the system can query the dealer’s records and return answers quickly to a phone or messaging app.
"...o ask you what's the service history like on this Ford Fiesta we've got for sale and any of his team can do thi..."
The Ford Fiesta Active is a small car with a more “adventure” look, meant to be practical for everyday driving. It’s still based on the Fiesta platform, but with styling and features that make it feel more upright. It’s mentioned because when you buy one used, people want to know the service history.
The Ford Fiesta Active is a crossover-styled version of the Fiesta, aimed at buyers who want a taller, more rugged look while staying in the small-car category. It’s the kind of model that often comes up in dealer inventory discussions because buyers ask about service history and maintenance records. In the podcast excerpt, it’s specifically tied to how a dealer evaluates a used car’s past care.
"... he was telling me does 800 click and click and collect sales a month now. 800 click and click sales month, which I think is amazing because most people think that that sort of kind of that click and collect model is dead."
Click and collect means you handle the purchase online and then pick the car up later. They’re saying it’s still working for them, even if some people thought it wouldn’t.
Click and collect is a retail model where customers buy online and then pick up the vehicle (or arrange pickup) without completing everything in-store. The discussion frames it as a sales channel that some people thought was “dead,” but the dealer is seeing strong volume.
"Other great examples I've seen is people using great CRM AI tools. The likes of what James mentioned from Impel."
CRM is software that helps a business keep track of customers and manage follow-ups. In this episode, they’re talking about using AI with CRM to improve after-service contact.
CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management—software used to manage customer interactions, follow-ups, and sales/service pipelines. The segment focuses on “CRM AI tools” being used (or planned) to improve aftersales and customer contact.
"The other one I just wanted to talk to you about was we had Google on the stage at the end of the day. And we talked at length..."
Google is the main search engine being discussed. The takeaway is that how Google (and its AI) shows results can change which car dealers people find.
Google is referenced as the platform where consumers search for vehicles and where AI-driven results (via Gemini) can surface. The discussion highlights how dealer content needs to align with evolving search behavior.
"He was talking about these long tail questions that they're putting into Google, how Gemini is now surfacing these in a slightly different way."
Long tail questions are the detailed searches people type when they’re closer to buying. Instead of just searching for a car brand, they ask things like whether it’s a good first car, which helps dealers show up for the right buyers.
“Long tail” questions are more specific, multi-part searches (e.g., “Is a Nissan Micra a good first car?”). They tend to reflect higher intent than generic searches and can help dealers match buyers who already know what they want.
"He suggested, I was chatting to him and he suggested just putting into chat GPT or Gemini, your dealership name. And I did it this morning."
ChatGPT is an AI chat tool you can ask questions to. In the episode, the host used it to find a used car dealer, showing how AI search could affect which dealers get found.
ChatGPT is an AI chatbot that can be prompted with questions to produce recommendations. The speaker describes using it (and Gemini) to ask for where to buy a used car, implying AI can influence dealer discovery.
"If you want to browse and people call it car porn, sometimes they just like looking at cars."
“Car porn” is slang for browsing cars purely for enjoyment—looking at photos, specs, and details even without an immediate purchase intent. The segment uses it to explain why category browsing can keep users engaged longer.
"and I did it yesterday playing around looking at some classic Mercedes, and you find some of the beautiful old ones"
Mercedes (Mercedes-Benz) is a major luxury car brand known for long-running model lines and a strong classic-car following. The speaker uses “classic Mercedes” as an example of how category browsing can lead you to specific brands and eras.
"Do you use Reddit much? ... Lots of people do. I mean, my teenage children do."
Reddit is a social platform made up of topic-based communities (“subreddits”). The speaker notes that more people are using it for car advice and recommendations, which can influence what buyers search for on dealer or marketplace sites.
"Especially when they're thinking interest rates are going to rise again this year."
Interest rates affect the cost of borrowing money. If rates are expected to rise, car loans and monthly payments can get more expensive, so fewer people buy.
Interest rates influence car affordability because many buyers finance through loans or leases. Higher expected rates can make monthly payments more expensive, which can reduce demand for both new and used vehicles.
"Everyone's talking about it going up, and we are seeing a burst of interest in plug-in hybrids. They're up 15% in terms of lead volumes so far this month alone."
A plug-in hybrid is a car that can drive using electricity like an EV, but it also has a regular engine for when you need it. You can charge it at home or at a charger.
Plug-in hybrids (PHEVs) are cars that can run on electricity from a battery, but also have an internal combustion engine for longer trips. They’re typically charged via an external plug, and their sales often rise when fuel prices and incentives make them more attractive.
ICE just means normal gas or diesel cars. They’re comparing how often these cars come back into the franchise network versus electric cars.
ICE stands for Internal Combustion Engine, meaning petrol/diesel vehicles. The speaker contrasts retention rates for EVs versus ICE cars to show how powertrain type influences where used vehicles end up.
"The second theme is around the opportunity in as much as I mentioned diversification in sales of electric vehicles. So the three to five year old EV, as I mentioned, was the fastest turning segment last year."
They’re talking about selling electric cars (EVs). The point is that EVs are growing, but the pricing and demand can be tricky, so dealers need a plan.
The discussion centers on electric vehicles as a sales opportunity and a market segment dealers need to plan for. It highlights how EV demand and pricing dynamics affect dealer strategy.
"the market in used cars was defined last year into two categories, independence franchise, the market up a little bit, up a bit more in independent, pretty much flat, tiny bit, 0.5% I think down in franchise."
This is the market for second-hand cars. The podcast is talking about how that market is moving and why some dealers do better than others.
The used car market refers to how demand and supply for pre-owned vehicles changes over time. In this segment, the host breaks it down by dealer type to explain why performance differs between groups.
"They're not used to it. Different processes, different challenges, different recon, different sales process."
Recon means getting a used car ready to sell. It can include fixing small issues and making the car look and drive right, and it gets more work-intensive on older cars.
“Recon” is short for reconditioning—work done to prepare used vehicles for sale (e.g., mechanical checks, cosmetic repairs, and refurbishment). The segment suggests franchise dealers face different reconditioning and sales processes when targeting older cars.
"The loss was so, so painful that Stellantis was actually forced to inject 35 million pounds of capital into that business in the summer of 2024 via some newly issued shares."
Stellantis is a big car company that owns multiple car brands. Here, they had to put extra money into a dealer-related business because it was losing a lot of money.
Stellantis is the multinational automaker formed from the merger of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and PSA Group. In this segment, it’s described as having to inject capital into a dealer business via newly issued shares, showing financial strain tied to its dealer network and brand performance.
"Well, you know, Stellantis have got some interesting brands. Some of them performing better than others. Peugeot, during that year, did all right."
Peugeot is one of the car brands owned by Stellantis. They’re saying Peugeot did relatively better than other brands in the same group.
Peugeot is one of Stellantis’ major brands. The segment notes that Peugeot performed better than some other Stellantis brands during the year, implying uneven brand strength affecting overall group results.
"...they have had a difficult time under the Carlos Tavares rule and they're coming out of it now much stronger and sharper."
Carlos Tavares is a senior leader in the auto industry. In this discussion, the hosts connect his leadership style to decisions about how high Stellantis tried to price its cars.
Carlos Tavares is a prominent automotive executive associated with Stellantis’ leadership during the period discussed. The episode attributes the pricing strategy and the resulting market challenges to his management approach.
"...We saw it with JLR. We've seen it with with others who manufacture in this country."
JLR is Jaguar Land Rover, another big car company in the UK. The host is saying it’s not just Bentley—other UK brands have also been hit by the same kind of problems.
JLR refers to Jaguar Land Rover, a major UK-based automaker. The speaker uses it as a comparison point, saying they’ve also been affected by the same trade/tariff pressures impacting other UK manufacturers.
"But equally, it's like the Rolls-Royce announcement where they were putting pulling back the commitment to being purely electric by 2030. That is a similar point, isn't it?"
Rolls-Royce is a top-tier luxury car brand. They’re talking about Rolls-Royce changing its plan for going fully electric by 2030, which can make people hesitate about buying EVs.
Rolls-Royce is a British luxury brand known for ultra-premium vehicles. The segment references a “Rolls-Royce announcement” about pulling back a commitment to being “purely electric by 2030,” highlighting how EV timelines can shift and affect buyer confidence.
"I do look at brands like Volkswagen, which you would just never have thought that they would ever not be first choice for so many families looking for small or medium sized cars."
Volkswagen is mentioned as a brand that many families traditionally considered first. The speaker is saying even strong brands can struggle if they don’t adapt quickly.
Volkswagen is cited as a brand that used to be a default choice for many families buying small-to-medium cars. The speaker suggests it’s now facing challenges because it hasn’t “revolutionised” itself enough.
"...she did some research with the AA and we went into detail into that into that research and 13,000 respondents to the survey."
They mention the survey had 13,000 people. A bigger group usually makes the results more trustworthy.
The survey sample size is given as 13,000 respondents, which matters because larger samples generally provide more reliable insights. It supports the credibility of the confidence statistic discussed next.
"But if you look at some Renault, I think they've resurrected themselves brilliantly and with their product. They've got a Chinese R&D center in Shanghai that's helped them develop the Twingo in 20 months."
The Renault Twingo is a small car meant for city driving. The host is saying Renault used a China-based research team to develop a new version much faster than you’d normally expect.
The Renault Twingo is a small city car, and the speaker is using it as an example of how quickly Renault developed a new product using its Chinese R&D presence in Shanghai. The point is that working closely with China’s EV/tech ecosystem can accelerate development timelines.
Select text to request an explanation
The Cardiola podcast is sponsored by Autotrader.
John, have you ever wondered why I, along with 14,000 other dealers, choose to partner with Autotrader?
Well actually, I didn't think so. I'll tell you anyway, with more than 84 million consumer visits every month,
it connects us with more engaged car buyers and delivers more deals than anyone else in the UK.
And now, with the launch of buying signals, we'll have brand new insights on every deal,
showing how likely a customer is to buy the car they're interested in.
Plus, as someone who set out to use AI and data as much as possible in my business,
I've found their technology, data and tools genuinely invaluable.
But when I do get stuck, which is, let's face it, most of the time,
Autotrader is always on hand and committed to supporting us to get the very best from our package.
To find out how they can help you, visit trade.autotrader.co.uk
Welcome back to the Cardiola podcast. You haven't listened before.
We pick our favourite stories of the week and ask an automotive industry guest to choose which were the best.
I'm Rebecca Chaplin, contributing editor at Cardiola Magazine,
and I said last week I wasn't going to be back, but here I am because John isn't, well, can't talk.
Well, I don't know how bad he's feeling, but he can't talk.
And joining me today is James Baggart, the founder, onstage presenter at Cardiola Live. How are you?
I'm very good. Thank you. I'm still sort of, I think I'm still on a bit of a high from yesterday.
I haven't really calmed down, so I think I'm going to have a massive crash this afternoon
like I've eaten loads of Mars bars and finally the sugar rush has worn off.
Shame John's not here, isn't it? He worked so hard over the last 24 hours on Cardiola Live,
it's obviously taken it out of him because he's lost his voice completely.
I tried to have a little meeting with him this morning on Slack and he said,
let's just do it the old-fashioned way via text.
Bless him, bless him.
But yeah, nice to see you back. Thank you for coming back on the podcast and hosting for John.
Obviously you did a lot of hosting yesterday as well. It was a good day, wasn't it, Cardiola Live?
Yes, it's been a bit of a crazy week, isn't it? And it just went so fast yesterday, which feels like a shame, I think.
I didn't get to talk to half the people I wanted to talk to and we obviously had the night before as well,
so we did get to speak to quite a lot of people there, which was nice.
But when you're in the presenting mode, you just sort of up and down all the time.
Yeah, and I think that worked really nicely and, you know, not wanting to make this a Cardiola Live debrief,
but we shortened the sessions this time, so they were like 20 minutes each.
So we packed more into the day, meant people could get away just after half-three to beat the traffic.
But I think it kept the pace really high throughout the day.
We had some really good people there, some really good sessions and it just meant that we could get through loads more.
So yeah, I absolutely loved it. I think we should probably introduce our guests and then we can talk about it a little bit more.
Let's do that.
Yeah, so our guest this week is Ian Plummer from AutoTrader, who was also on stage. How are you doing in?
I'm good, thank you. And I also very much enjoyed the session yesterday. I thought you guys did a great job.
You had some amazing speakers, you had a great mix. It was really interesting and a pleasure to be part of.
Thank you. And yeah, it was, I really enjoyed yesterday.
It was nice catching up with loads of different people from across the industry and we had some really interesting panels.
I'd like to get your opinion on those as well in a moment. I think the one that really stood out for me.
I mean, they were all fantastic, but the one that really stood out was the one I hosted with the Chinese Challenger Brands.
I think after this, I'm going to stop calling them Challenger Brands because really they have made their mark on the industry.
And I think this year it's only going to get even more important.
They said some fascinating stuff. I think the questions that we asked about how they've been accepted so quickly into the UK was interesting.
Their insights into price and how important that was. And also their thoughts on tariffs.
And they all answered it fantastically well. And I think they just, I mean, a lot of them said you can't worry about it until it comes along.
But I think they sort of, the feeling I got was that they're not really worried about them.
They can still make a success of this UK market if tariffs came along.
So I mean, that was the standout panel for me. It was definitely the one I was looking forward to the most.
I mean, notwithstanding your panel, what stood out for you?
Well, that discussion around the Chinese Brands is fantastically interesting as they are.
And we call them the Chinese Challenger Brands, but some of them are Chinese.
But there's also the American ones have been Tesla still in that category kind of.
There's the likes of Lucid that are not too far away, Rivian would be great to see over here as well.
So it's not a purely Chinese folk sort of lead thing.
But equally, what do you call the existing brands?
I've often had that debate, Legacies, the kind of often used word established brands.
But it's, I think it's just calling brands.
I think that is a fascinating debate.
And I think you're right that the tariff thing hasn't stopped them in Europe to put tariffs in European,
in the European Union on at variable levels on different brands on EVs.
So what did they do to help plug in hybrid to create a new category, which is growing fast in the UK as well.
Superhybrid range extenders.
So that is definitely an interesting debate.
And is the thing, I talk about it a lot and people sometimes say, what do you talk about so much?
But usually I just answer simply because it is a fundamentally massive shift in the power base of automotive.
You go to China, you see what's happening there.
It really does seem like it's the center of the automotive world.
And it's changing the shape of the UK space because we've seen data on the consumer openness to those brands.
And we are by sort of characteristic the most open market outside of our actual tariff rules.
Our mindset as consumers is it's great product that we're looking for.
It doesn't matter really the heritage of the legacy of the brand.
And the brand at the moment is quite neutral and they're not known for much the new brands.
So they've got kind of a free play.
I was just going to say, I think the way that these brands have been accepted by the British public so quickly fascinates me as well.
Because you compare that to and they compared on stage themselves to the Japanese and the Korean brands when they came in.
They've managed to get acceptance in this market within months, not years, within months.
What do you think it is that's driven that?
Is it timing? Is it product? Is it price? What is it?
Well, fundamentally product is definitely a big driver.
They've got very good products.
I think people often, when I talk with media, this is sort of that obvious thing.
They tend to say with a three-phrase word of, sorry, three-word phrase of cheap Chinese EVs.
And I always say to them, there's three words there, but two of them are wrongs.
They're not cheap.
What they are is great value.
There's loads of options on them.
They're very content rich, which makes them good value, not necessarily cheap, but definitely affordable.
You've got a lot for your money.
And they're mostly not EVs.
And there's a lot of EVs.
Don't get me wrong.
But they're growing that PHEV category super fast.
They're more than half of the PHEV inquiries on our platform are going to the new Chinese brands.
I think something like 40 plus percent of the registration is already going that way, as well as those super hybrid.
So they've got great product.
They've grown trust and reassurance factors by doing two things, putting long warranties on their products.
Exactly like the Koreans did, as you mentioned.
So that gives the reassurance, well, if you trust your product, I should too.
They've got great networks behind them.
And much quicker than, remember, here in Hyundai, they grew their business fast.
Like I said, nothing like as fast, but their dealership presence was nothing like as big or as imposing.
In other words, they didn't have the biggest retail groups almost falling over themselves to put their brand name on their new doors.
So if you've got a lookers and a group one and a nine o'clock and so on that are putting BYD and JQ in a motor all over their businesses,
that reassures the consumer.
They know where they can get the car looked after if ever that that that's necessary, along with the long warranty.
And the third factor is they've grown brand awareness.
So people do know what the JQ brand is all about now.
They definitely know what the JQ seven looks like.
It's got great cuts out of people and they're buying it like hot cakes.
So there's a combination of those three factors that suggest.
Do you think because I don't see huge amounts of marketing for these for these brands, you know, it's like, you know, if you listen to the commercial radio,
you don't they don't pop up on there.
I don't really see them when I'm surfing the web.
You know, maybe I'm not in the in that car buying category.
So I'm not being targeted, but they do seem to have got brand awareness really quickly.
I mean, it's just I wonder whether the point you make there is because they've managed to partner with these with these big brands so quickly.
Definitely helps if you've got 150 flags in the ground across the UK when the consumer has heard something about these brands and then drives by one of them.
They are going to have their head turn and say, Ah, that's the thing I've heard about on the TV.
Or that's the one I store around the stadium.
I remember byd did that at the Euros.
And what we've seen on our platform is 80 months or so ago, they would have great curiosity, but not conversion.
In other words, people would find them in search.
They click on them.
They said, Oh, that's that byd I've heard about.
They therefore their their ad view number was pretty good, but their flow through to lead was limited.
People thought, Well, I've heard about it.
Like to know a bit more about it.
Not really reassured yet.
They did some spend on auto trader to create more awareness with brand stores and so on to reassure that consumer down the flow.
And now they've gone from people not clicking from our view into lead to the exact opposite with really strong conversion rates.
So their stock performs at sort of double the level of other people in terms of its likelihood to go from an ad view into into into a lead.
So people are now thinking, like I said, great product, great value.
And people are talking about the more social proof is a big factor as well.
James, isn't it?
It's not just marketing.
If you know somebody's got a JQ seven, they're probably going to say it's great product.
Probably going to talk about it.
The mates, somebody else is going to then go and have a look at it and buy one.
Am I right in thinking?
I mean, I'm pretty sure we did a video recently for all about Chinese brands.
It's been incredibly popular on the website.
Am I right in thinking that one in four new car leads last year on auto trader were sent to these Chinese new brands, new entrance.
Exactly that.
Yes.
You are right.
It is incredible number.
It is incredible number.
And if you think about their market share, it's not at that level right now.
That's just a new entry from brands.
We don't put, let's say Volvo in that category sort of controlled by the Geely Group and so on.
So it's not the fullest number you could do for overall Chinese product.
But I think we're expecting the market share for those brands to get beyond 15% this year and gets probably 20% in no more than a couple of years.
We originally said 20% for new entry brands would be a forecast for 2030.
We did that in the early 2010, 20s.
People said no chance.
We included Tesla in that, the new entry player at the time that was the biggest one.
We don't include them now.
But if you look at 15%, like BYD and JQ Emoda, Cherry together, both those two groups did 5% in December last year.
They're both looking for 5% this year, full year.
You add in the MG did for a bit percent.
They're likely to look for something similar again this year.
So if they all look for six digit numbers of 100,000 cars, that's on its own circa 15% of the market.
Add in a few from Shang-An and Neon and Geely and so on.
You're probably looking north of 15, hence our confidence.
And that's why if you look at the lead indicator of Auditrader is leads, but it's also a lead indicator because it's earlier than the sale, of course.
People are looking and then engaging.
If that's at 20 something percent, likely that's going to flow through into sales.
So it's definitely shaping the market.
I'm going to come back to you in a second, but I just want to give Becca an opportunity just to give her highlights for Cardi live yesterday.
Was there a panel that stood out for you that really stood out yesterday?
You also hosted a few, didn't you?
My favorite panel is a tough one between the two dealer panels.
I did pretty much all the dealer panels tonight except for the independent dealer panel.
I really liked because I think we were lucky we didn't mention agency at all yesterday.
I mentioned it on stage just to be like, oh, we've not mentioned it, but AI was obviously the buzzword that came on every single session.
But I don't know if so many people were expecting the independent dealers to be so hot on their AI.
And I mean, I talked to so many people where they were talking about how they built their own AI thing.
So it was a lot more than we could cover just in that 20 minute session.
But really interesting things that these people are building and seeing the opportunities and how they can as small businesses amplify what they're doing,
not just in dealerships, but other businesses around the industry.
Yeah, I found that really interesting.
Yeah.
And I agree with that one.
I was watching that one from the back of the room while you were chatting away.
And Stephen Douglas from the dealer pod and from really easy car credit was on stage.
And he talks about Claude a lot.
And I mean, I don't use Claude.
I know you do.
Yeah, you love Claude.
I don't use Claude.
I use chat GPT and Gemini mostly.
But he was talking about all the different things he did.
I mean, the interesting one, I wrote about this in my sub stack this morning.
He said that he got Claude to interview him about his business and ask all the questions about how is the cars he buys and the customers he sells to.
And then Claude was more clued up about his business and and and helps him further when he when he asked questions about it.
I thought that was fascinating.
And I had a couple of chats with with George Manning the night before from from Hilton and some of the stuff that they're doing with AI was amazing.
I mean, he showed me on his phone.
He had this he sort of had this message system like he could text it basically an AI system and said how many cars we sold today.
And it would go off and query his his DMS data kit, fire back the information direct to his phone in the text.
And then he said, look, you watch this.
He said, I'm going to ask you what's the service history like on this Ford Fiesta we've got for sale and any of his team can do this.
And it fires it back instantly looks it up in the database.
AI fires it back instantly the information.
And I thought that was amazing.
He also showed me how he uses AI to do carbine running all of the motorway and Carwell catalogs through it.
Something that I've been desperately trying to do.
And he uses it to identify the cars to buy how much he should bid.
And then he said he does it in a couple of in a couple of minutes in the morning just places his bids.
And I thought that is someone who is genuinely using AI in a fan fantastic way cars as well.
So like, yeah, I mean, he was telling me does 800 click and click and collect sales a month now.
800 click and click sales month, which I think is amazing because most people think that that sort of kind of that click and collect model is dead.
But he's clearly proven it.
It's working. I think you're right.
AI ran throughout the day.
It came up in many sessions and I think it's sort of turned from I mean, one of the one of the comments was it's not about how it's business critical now is what someone said.
It's not just something you should just be thinking about it's business critical.
What are your what were your takes on the AI conversations that came out of it?
And I mean, have you got any practical examples like that George George Manning one where where you've seen dealers using it really successfully?
Yeah, first of all, James, it reminds me of we were both at NADA Convention over in the US a few weeks ago and AI was everywhere.
I mean, partly because it is everywhere and partly because the Americans are very good at talking about stuff and marketing stuff and it really is in every single bit of marketing, whether it's got substance or not sometimes.
But I was I was struck by the amount of great examples that people are giving on AI and in an event we did earlier this week as well.
We had a similar focus on tech and how people are using that to get ahead.
The key thing that strikes me and what you just said and what I heard yesterday is that it is one of these areas where you do need to try and move fast because it's a productivity tool more than anything.
And it's like I said on stage one point is a daft example like Excel like Excel a long time ago.
Some people go ahead of it used it more and people are using like I don't know an accountant what I've been doing ledges with a pencil at some point or a calculator and then Excel accelerates things and that's ages ago.
We feel stupid as an example, but there's always something whether it be the Internet or the new tool, whatever.
And it feels like you are going to need to try and use these tools faster than your competition because everyone will do it at some point like everyone uses Excel today.
It's why he's a stupid example like that one.
But at some point everyone will be using AI in many different ways.
So you do need to have a speed of movement kind of thing at first mover angle.
And I took away a few good examples from yesterday but to answer your point about other ones I've heard.
An unusual one I heard recently was a fleet manager in a franchise retailer who used AI to find all the target audiences of fleets of I think it was sub 25 vehicles in their local area.
And that AI would trawl through companies house to define companies of a certain size, a certain type that had a fleet and then to find out equally what was on those fleets.
Find the models and the likely renewal schedule of those vehicles and then the contact details of those companies and then you're able to contact the right people with the right kind of offer.
Imagine trawling through the web and doing that through Google and so on it would just take hours.
Other great examples I've seen is people using great CRM AI tools.
The likes of what James mentioned from Impel.
They don't yet do it, they're going to do it, but others are doing the CRM side of things for after sales.
I think there's a hidden gem.
Franchise retailers in particular make most of their money there, 45-50% of their profit is coming from there.
So if your service and CRM and their motif reminders are done by that, it's great.
But think how many EVHCs are done by retailers and aren't followed up.
The vast majority and if you ask most of your friends that they've had an EVHC and they've ever had a phone call say, you know, those breaks have three months on them.
It's now two months down the road.
Maybe we should bring you back in.
If you put all of that into AI, all of a sudden your contact rate as well as your response rate is so much higher and it feels like those are the sort of hidden gems that people need to focus on.
Areas where there's admin tasks and where there's big profit opportunity.
Yeah, definitely.
I think that conversational, outbound conversational AI is coming down the road, isn't it?
And I was chatting to a few new businesses at the event about what they're producing and a lot of it was exactly that.
When you get to a point where AI is making outbound sales calls, when it is helping you in your sales department, book people in for appointments, it's powerful because it doesn't give up.
It keeps trying until it gets hold of them and it can do exactly what a good sales advisor can do.
So I think, yeah, that's a fascinating thing.
The other one I just wanted to talk to you about was we had Google on the stage at the end of the day.
And we talked at length to Huxley Stewart about how consumers are now changing the way they search for vehicles.
He was talking about these long tail questions that they're putting into Google, how Gemini is now surfacing these in a slightly different way.
The kind of examples he gave was it's not just about like Nissan Micro.
Where can I buy a Nissan Micro near me?
Is a Nissan Micro a good first car?
Those sorts of questions.
He suggested, I was chatting to him and he suggested just putting into chat GPT or Gemini, your dealership name.
And I did it this morning.
I didn't even put my name in.
I said, where should I buy a good used car in Gosport?
Thankfully, Clever Car Collection came up in the results.
But there'll be some dealers where it doesn't.
So you need to think about how you produce content that gets you into those search results.
But my question to you is, searches on AutoTrader are very much linked to make a model, aren't they?
At the moment, make model and postcode.
Where you get research from Google like this that says people are searching in different ways.
What's AutoTrader going to do to respond?
How can you respond?
There's a lot in there.
I'm trying to unpack a few things in what you said.
And come to that last bit at the end of account.
I do agree with the Google point.
People are definitely searching in a different way.
I also think Google in a really strong position, personal view on this.
You mentioned what you used, Claude.
I use Gemini a lot, partly because I land on it almost instinctively,
because it's there in my Google usage.
And I think they have a great chance of translating their dominance in search into a dominance in AI
because of that.
Not sure all the plethora of AI solutions are going to exist in the future.
Just like how many people still use Netscape or Bing or whatever,
but they existed a while ago and then they quickly faded as certain tools
became a predominant method of working and Google became a verb.
So I think they've got a great chance.
What we see in general is that that kind of search particularly replaces the upper funnel journey
that a consumer does when they're researching something, whether it be a car or anything else,
much less than when they get into the structured data sets,
the LLMs that we have when a lot of AI that drives AutoTrader has them for many years,
along with the agentic AI solutions, which are the clever stuff around what is also a moving data set,
the car sort of data is moving all the time.
It's that combination, which we think is particularly valuable.
So when people are searching on AutoTrader already today,
they're able to do something a little bit different with category search.
I don't know if you've played around with this one, but you've got categories that you can dig into
which go beyond the pure maker model.
So things like everyone focuses on the OMG category with some really funky models in.
Definitely worth a look if you haven't already.
If you want to browse and people call it car porn, sometimes they just like looking at cars.
That's where you'll spend your time.
But if you want to look for classic cars and then refined by brand,
and I did it yesterday playing around looking at some classic Mercedes,
and you find some of the beautiful old ones, or maybe even like a 90s model,
which is not necessarily the really old, beautiful classic Mercedes,
but they've just got some sort of top year cool wall kind of status.
So there's different ways of searching.
We're already applying in that regard, and there's more in the pipeline to go further in that sense.
And I think you can imagine enabling more search on the product page
to allow a consumer to be able to dig into more of the detailed data sets
that we have about a given vehicle.
So to answer your point really, that's much more when you're in the category now
of I'm wanting to compare different models.
I'm seeing different options in front of me.
My head's turned into another product I hadn't even thought about
because often I don't know what I don't know,
and it's only when I'm starting to search that I find these different models
that are out there that are increasingly from these new entry brands
that I didn't even know the name of, the brand or the model,
or models from legacy brands as we called them
that have changed their name from Golf to IDs and so on.
So I stumble on them.
People spend about 800 or I think it's 887 minutes on average
searching for their car and auto-trader at the moment.
And they take a long time doing that, of course, over about three months
and they will look at 18 brands.
So that's a journey we go on where we almost stumble across different things.
But it's rather different than the upper funnel, more AI related search.
And the combination of the two is I think where we'll get to.
Yeah, I think I sort of think that with the likes of AI,
people are using it more as that expert really,
their friend in the park and asking them what car they should buy
and then going off onto the platforms like yours and others
and asking where can I find that car?
I suppose it's just a different part of the search process.
Can I just want to make one second, another good example,
one other one you might want to try in your own business.
Do you use Reddit much?
No, but a few people have recommended this to me recently.
Lots of people do.
I mean, my teenage children do.
It's more and more common.
And an American retailer told me the other day
that they were advised to go on to Reddit
and see what it says about their business,
if it says anything about their business,
and to actually ask questions into Reddit
that you're then able to answer yourself about the models you sell,
the cars, the business that you are
and actually start creating a bit of a profile on Reddit for yourself
by actually almost self-generating.
It sounds like a bit of a cheat,
but apparently it is working in the US
and retailers are getting wise on how they can create a profile
where otherwise none would exist.
That is interesting because one of my colleagues was saying it the other day
and I was very surprised when he said,
I've been spending a lot of time on Reddit recently
and I'm using it for lots of local information.
He's not the sort of person that I would have imagined to use it,
which made it kind of really stick out in my mind.
And your social media group, by the way, yesterday,
I was really fascinated by that session.
It was James and Danny.
To your point on AI and so on,
I think a retailer needs to create their own distinctive point of difference.
It could be that they're focused on EVs and they want to talk about EVs.
It could be that they're focused on German brands and they want to do that.
It just could be that they want to talk about the quirky Liverpool audience
factor that I think one of them mentioned,
whether it's Danny or James.
But that's fantastic.
You create something really authentic that people can engage with
and then you can stand out in AI, can't you?
Can I move us on to a slightly different topic?
I mean, we've, you know, the clever car collection this week,
it's gone quiet.
It went quiet like sort of back end of last week
and it's gone like this week, been really quiet.
And I just wonder whether, what I'm interested to know is,
are you experiencing that on the platform
and do you think world events are playing a part in consumer confidence right now?
I mean, we've got warring around, petrol prices rapidly increasing.
I mean, when we've seen that sort of stuff in the past,
consumers do clam up a little bit, don't they?
Especially when they're thinking interest rates are going to rise again this year.
I'm just interested in your wider opinion on what you think is happening right now in the market.
Right now, the short answer is no, we're not seeing that impact.
The March numbers we've seen so far is good, whether it be new car volumes and used.
Having said that, I mean, I just did a forum earlier on with all our customers over in Northern Ireland,
shared our data with you, that kind of call all the time
and share anything we could see in the market.
And I refer to the data we had from 2022,
when the energy prices were shooting upwards in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine by Russia.
And the current situation could end up like that.
It will all depend on the depth and length of the current crisis, of course.
Today, the petrol price, for example, isn't going up as much as we're expecting it to go up.
Everyone's talking about it going up, and we are seeing a burst of interest in plug-in hybrids.
They're up 15% in terms of lead volumes so far this month alone.
Electric is equally going upwards, but not quite as much.
I think the government maybe dampened that by putting the frighteners on people with the paper mile tax and so on.
Otherwise, they would be thinking, like we did in 2022,
I should go and buy an electric car because they were surging in interest up to more like a third of our new car enquiries were going to electric back then.
So back in 2022, to my point, we did see a drop in consumer confidence that was already happening and accelerated.
We saw a rise in inflation that was already happening, but it accelerated.
It went from 4% to like 10%.
And we did see, obviously, the fuel and energy prices feed through into cost of living issues.
But if the issue today in Iran continues, depth gets deeper, the length gets longer,
then yes, I think we will see some dampening on consumer confidence.
But even then, in 2022, despite what I just said about the macro factors,
2022 was actually a decent year for car sales and even used a like.
So let's hope not.
Let's talk a little bit as well about the research you presented yesterday.
We'll be writing about that on our website very shortly.
But just give us a little bit of a little bit of a summary of those key points
because there was three key themes, wasn't there, that ran throughout that research?
Yeah, we talked about three themes of sourcing sales and systems.
The sourcing one is essentially talking to the fact that the supply issue,
which I think has been the main deciding factor of the shape of the car market over the last few years.
In other words, it has constrained the market because there's not been as much of it.
That issue is becoming less of a franchise issue now and more of a growing indie issue
in as much as it's the five to seven year category of cars,
which is going to see a third decline in the next year compared to 2024.
So that's basically the reflection.
If you think six years ago, what was happening?
Well, we're 20th March, 2026, 23rd of March, 2020 was the first lockdown.
So we are now six years beyond that period where we had unfortunately the dealership
shut up and so on.
Really tricky time for everybody, panic and doubt about what was going to happen in the car market.
We only built 1.6 million cars.
We only built 1.6 million new cars the year after and the year after.
Those fallow years are flowing through.
So that's creating a growing tension in the market where indies will now more likely see the dearth of vehicles
that franchises have already seen.
They'll probably come and dip down into younger cars as well already seeing that.
The retention rate of younger cars by franchise fell a bit last year.
They've been particularly doing it on the fast turning three to five year old EVs where the retention rate in franchise
is now only 44% for those cars.
It's 64 for ICE.
So that's because leasing vehicles where we've sold all our new EVs are not so likely to come back into franchise.
So sourcing has been a big challenge.
It is a big challenge.
Diversification is the way around that problem.
Getting into older cars, if that's what you need to do your franchise, getting maybe into younger cars,
but it's going to be a battleground, that's for sure.
No, please carry on.
The second theme is around the opportunity in as much as I mentioned diversification in sales of electric vehicles.
So the three to five year old EV, as I mentioned, was the fastest turning segment last year.
It was also in 2024.
The younger EVs are a kind of squeezed middle.
They're suffering from the fact that the new ones are getting more and more aggressively priced.
And on the other side, you've got a really affordable older used vehicles.
So the nearly new EV is tough news, but the three to five is great news.
The used EV market is growing quite fast.
They weigh one in five now of this recent surge of interest in EVs of all leads we're seeing on that naught to five year category.
So they are one in five of pretty much of supply as well as of demand.
And many larger groups, supermarkets, independents, as well as some franchise groups have really got behind the opportunity on EV,
thinking that this is a new and growing part of the market.
There's a bow wave of cars.
They're being sold in increasing numbers in new cars, whether you agree or don't agree with Zev mandate or the speed at which it's going.
Most people agree with it, but not the speed.
It is happening.
So the early head around that, the more likely you are to get ahead of the challenge.
And the third theme was around the systems point.
And that was as we've touched on AI, data, tech, et cetera, using data to inform your buying decisions, your pricing decisions,
not leaving we counted 24 million pounds of profit on the table when you've got high rated vehicles,
which are being priced under 100% of their retail valuation.
That's equivalent to 3000 pounds today for every single retailer that works on auto trader.
So this data to inform your buying, your selling, but even your consumer engagement with buying signals from our platform and so on,
which should help you convert better and quicker and more profitably.
So there's a combination of three key themes we think are the key chapters of the playbook for 2026.
Ian, what are the best dealers on your platform doing at the moment to really make themselves a success?
I mean, what's the thing that really stands out for you when you talk to these people?
I think the broad answer is turning risk into opportunity.
By that, I mean, we mentioned how competitive the new car market is a minute ago with all the new brands.
That's already feeding through into nearly new used cars of those Chinese brands and so on,
already weighing a big chunk, they're weighing already 20% of the sub one year old EVs,
pretty logically, and so on and so on in hybrids as well.
But that competition is a risk if you sit still and hope to renew customers and so on.
Consumers are, as we said, more and more brand diagnostic open minded in the UK.
So you need to be conquest focused.
So if you turn the risk of competition into an opportunity because consumers are open minded and you get in front of them,
you have more chance of winning more of them.
That's the first thing.
The second is equally turning that sourcing challenge into an opportunity by diversifying.
So you go into EVs, you go into older, younger cars,
you find a different part of the market that you aren't yet in and you go for that.
And the third angle would be on retention,
where I said there's a real challenge for retailers just now of,
especially their franchise and a lot of their profit depends on their used car business
and their after sales business much more than their new car business.
They're not seeing the used car.
They absolutely need to do more in terms of retention using tech in particular to drive that
to try and retain the opportunity and the value of the lifecycle of that customer and the car.
Sourcing, we know, going back to that first point is really hard.
So it's really a combination of those different factors and understanding the market trends
so that you can do something positive about them.
That's the underlying factor you see in the stronger retailers.
It's like if I finished with one last point,
the market in used cars was defined last year into two categories, independence franchise,
the market up a little bit, up a bit more in independent,
pretty much flat, tiny bit, 0.5% I think down in franchise.
What's the main difference in franchise divided into two broadly?
Those who got ahead of those challenges and got into older cars, those who didn't.
The average age of cars in franchise went from 3.4 about two years ago down to three last year
because some people just sold the cars they could get and didn't go after the older cars,
which are harder for them to do.
They're not used to it.
Different processes, different challenges, different recon, different sales process.
So it's a mindset, I think, is the main answer to your question, James.
Very interesting. Ian, thank you very much for joining us today.
Thank you for all the support yesterday at Cardiolive.
And also, thank you for hanging around because we are going to do some stories, aren't we, Rebecca?
Now, a quick word from one of our sponsors.
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Now, back to the podcast.
Yes, let me explain how it works first. James and I have both chosen our favourite stories that have appeared on Cardila this week,
and we don't know what each other have chosen.
We're going to take it in turns to reveal our stories and have a chat about each.
And at the end, Ian is going to tell us who is the winner based on who had the best stories.
Shall I go first?
Well, you won last week, so as is tradition.
There's too much stuff to choose from this week, but I'm going to go with the Close Brothers story,
which you might have seen on our website from a couple of days ago,
that they are cutting 600 jobs, basically.
They're trying to save millions of pounds to pay for this finance compensation,
which they're now expecting is going to cost them 300 million, which is a lot higher than the money that they set aside.
So this came out at the same time as their results where they reported a loss,
but it wasn't quite as bad as the loss from before.
But yeah, it sounds like a very difficult time at Close Brothers at the moment.
It was interesting this because it followed.
Their results came out the day after Vice Roy Research had claimed that Close Brothers had not set aside enough money for their provision for the finance claim.
So Close Brothers said they've set aside 300 million and Vice Roy Research said that they think it should be double that.
And actually there were some claims that it should be over a billion is what they said.
And the shares for Close Brothers off the back of this slumped 14% on Monday.
So yeah, I mean, it was a little bit of a traumatic time for them.
Close Brothers on Monday had to come out with a statement after the markets had closed saying that they disagreed with this research categorically,
strongly disagreed with the report they said in their statement.
And then the next morning, these results came out where they said that they think they have set aside enough money for this finance provision,
but have brought forward these changes to the business where they are going to be going to be cutting jobs,
which is very, very worrying.
But yeah, it was it.
I think the timing of this was very interesting.
Yeah, I'm right in thinking on either Vice Roy, they were a short seller and another scandal.
And also they've got sort of credibility in saying this, but also when you see that the Close Brothers shares dropped so much,
that's what they want at the end of the day.
So I do think it does feel a little bit, you have to have a bit of skepticism.
I think it's all things that at the end of the day, that's what these short sellers want is.
But I mean, it does say, you know, I don't think even now we don't know what the what this finance compensation scheme is going to look like.
And it's and it's clearly having ramifications for for a lot of these these finance companies saying,
you know, what's your what's your take on this on the on the finance commission side of things?
I mean, well, firstly, do you think it's going to be a positive in the end for the for the motor industry like the PPI scandal?
Well, PPI scandal put money into people's pockets that they went and spent on.
So we mean, I think that that is something I could see happening.
Yes, I don't think the money is quite the same amount, but it definitely would help pay some deposits,
putting it on the taking out the initial loan on the car.
I fundamentally do think, though, that there is overreach by the FCA on what's going on right now.
I think the good part of what's happened is that there's more transparency in finance commissions and that hasn't dampened sales.
I don't know of any final retailer or finance part and we've got all of both.
We've told us that they've had anything other than very low, very, very decimal point, low numbers of people who've kicked back when commissions have been
pretty disclosed in front of them.
So that's good.
Good from a consumer point of view.
Good that the industry shows that there wasn't such a dramatic problem in inverted commas in the first place.
I think the Supreme Court decision, though, talked about relatively vague.
I mean, there were two things thrown out.
One one upheld.
In the one that was upheld, there were relatively vague notions of fairness and then a case which was deemed unfair by tentages of cost of the loan and so on.
The way you then apply that is so subjective and it feels like the FCA have applied it rather extensively, much more so than I think the Supreme Court judgment.
My interpretation of it was leading us towards in a way that is almost mathematically impossible.
And an upcent finance deal is, for example, already ridiculously impossible to put into the context of their their their approach on those numbers.
And they've gone all the way back much further than even their own mandate of their own existence should allow.
And therefore, I think there's this excessive reach that is damaging to the industry.
And I think damaging the jobs of those people are close brothers and the business of close brothers, the shareholders close brothers.
I just think that's highly regrettable.
And if Rachel Reeves wants a government wants to be part of a government that has a real agenda for growth, and if automotive is a big employer, which it is, then this is probably not the best way to go about it.
No, very, very good points.
I am going to move us on to my first story of the week.
And I would like to talk about Stellantis and you, which is the wholly owned manufacturer owned dealer group, obviously owned by Stellantis, funnily enough by the name.
Their results came out for 2024, which is rather late.
Normally they're at the end of September, because they've got a year end of December the 31st.
So they're rather late, but they came out this week.
This is the business formerly known as Robbins and Day, which is what probably most people know it has.
But they lost a staggering 47.9 million pounds before tax in 2024.
The loss was so, so painful that Stellantis was actually forced to inject 35 million pounds of capital into that business in the summer of 2024 via some newly issued shares.
And so I looked at this story.
I mean, on the face of it looks, it does look very, very disappointing.
I sort of makes me wonder, you know, why are they struggling so much?
Well, you know, Stellantis have got some interesting brands.
Some of them performing better than others.
Peugeot, during that year, did all right.
But some of the others, DS was down 50%.
When it comes to market share, Vauxhall was down 21%.
Citroën was down.
They really did struggle during that year, those brands.
And obviously this is the Stellantis owned dealer group and they're the ones selling those vehicles.
Also, you need to remember that this group was selling a lot of those vehicles for the manufacturer to hit some very stringent ZEV mandate targets.
You know, where do you get rid of those vehicles if you need to hit targets into your own dealer group?
And funnily enough, that does cause some problems when it comes to the finances.
So I think we're seeing the effects of that in these results.
But it doesn't look good for this group.
You look back over the last two years, they lost 33.4 million in 23, 47.9 million in 2024.
And actually when you compare that to, I mean, some of the other accounts we reported on, some dealer groups did all right that year.
So this is very, very unusual.
And a bit of a worry, I think, a bit of a worry.
I don't know, what do you think? What was your take on it?
I was only going to say, I don't know if you mentioned this, but the finance costs as well.
Finance costs weighed heavily on the group costing 28.7 million in 2024.
In total, Stelantus and you owes the group companies 425 million at the year end.
Yeah, I think that's part of the story, I think, is, you know, the tell behind this is that they own their parent company.
They don't own an external bank.
So that money is recycling back into the business, isn't it?
28.7 million pounds of finance charges is just going back up the chain.
Yeah.
So on the face of it, if you take that into account, the losses are not quite so bad.
But I don't know, Ian, what was your take on it?
A hugely concerning number.
I'm not sure it could all be down to the UK.
I'm assuming it must be an international number.
I think the thing that strikes me most is that over the last few years and right now today, Stelantus have had, do have some great products, strong brands.
They, I think, have had a difficult time under the Carlos Tavares rule and they're coming out of it now much stronger and sharper.
I think they'll have a lot better time of it now.
But the problem they had was they had some good cars that Carlos Tavares wanted them to sell too expensively.
And it was all about what he called pricing power.
And to give you examples, I heard of cases where he would tell his deal of conferences that the Citroen product needed to be priced against Volkswagen.
It was as good as product and content wise and so on.
And the Peugeot needed to be priced against Audi.
That is just unrealistic and aiming to do that over a long, long, long period of time with sustained focus on brilliant product and marketing and so on.
Why not?
But if you do that too soon, you end up with a pushed market where you don't sell your way to a target in the quarter.
If the pricing is way too high, you resale your numbers of tiny.
You then either push in fleet, self-register at the end of the quarter and end up creating damage to your residual values and so on.
And I think that's a dangerous cocktail.
I think today, right now, Stelantus is definitely not in that frame of mind.
They have started the year with some much stronger offers and are seemingly resailing their way to a much healthier proposition.
And I wish them well with that.
So that's the way to go.
Yeah.
Becca, over to you.
It feels like a very negative podcast so far.
But the other big story of the week, of course, is that Bentley has announced that it's going to slash hundreds of jobs at its factory.
And I thought this was interesting because Bentley have been this brand that sort of like held up as a halo product over the last few years.
I can't remember if their results last year were strong, but I know they had a few years of like they were the top of the chain.
Everyone wanted to be like them.
So yeah, I thought this was interesting that the tables seem to have turned so badly.
And I don't know if that's to do with it being a UK plan.
And maybe it's not working as a whole global thing.
But I'd love to know what you guys think.
I mean, on this one, I mean, I remember writing about some Bentley results a few years ago and I think they were making over close to 200,000 pounds profit per car.
You know, they were absolutely having it away.
But this was a time when the when when global trade was a lot freer than it is at the moment.
And I think what you're seeing here is is a direct result of Trump's tariffs.
A lot of those cars would be exported to to America.
America is a massive market for Bentley.
And, you know, they've been hit very badly by those by those tariffs.
We saw it with JLR.
We've seen it with with others who manufacture in this country.
And I think that's exactly what we're seeing with Bentley.
What's your take?
Yeah, totally agree.
I think it's the US issue.
And one example on that is you remember the 100,000 quota limit, whatever of cars, you know, they don't have the full tariff supply.
Well, no one's ever clarified what happens when you get to 100,001.
Whose car is that?
Is that if that's a Bentley vehicle?
Do they then pay the full load of that gets sort of washed across all the other cars that have been sold by JLR and others in the meantime?
I think that's definitely weighing on them.
But equally, it's like the Rolls-Royce announcement where they were putting pulling back the commitment to being purely electric by 2030.
That is a similar point, isn't it?
They have to now manage the fact that across the world, they brands generally speaking don't have this.
They have this opportunity to have common platforms and sort of world cars that work in the US as much as in Asia, as much as in Europe.
And that makes things much, much harder for them.
Yeah, definitely.
Let's move on.
And I'm going to take us back to Cardinal Life and a headline interview I did with Electrifying founder Ginny Buckley, which I found absolutely fascinating.
It was in the afternoon. She was on this podcast a couple of weeks back and listeners will remember that.
And she came to the stage with some really interesting research.
I mean, she she talks about the fact that she thinks there's going to be some codex of the car industry.
I thought it was an absolutely fantastic quote pulled it out from my substat this week because I thought it was so good because I think she's absolutely hit the nail on the head there.
There are going to be some brands that are going to be caught napping or probably have been caught napping by these by these Chinese Chinese entrance.
And I think off the back of that will probably see their demise. I tried to push her on who she thought they were but she was very diplomatic, very diplomatic.
But it was interesting that session wasn't it. She was talking about all of the different things that are putting off buyers at the moment when it comes to to buying EVs.
How important dealers are to that to that sales process and and the advice that we need to give customers when it comes to buying used EVs, new EVs, whatever it is.
You've got to be that that person that can confidently give them information and help them on that journey because you were sort of at the end of that buying cycle, aren't we in the dealership.
And at that point in time, people are obviously curious enough to come and see it, but they need to be pushed over the edge if it's right for them.
I mean, we talked about how I've actually talked some customers out of buying an EV when it's not right for them, which I think is just as important as trying to talk the other people into one when it is.
I thought her take on the industry was very interesting. I mean, she's she said some some some very interesting things in that in that session, thoroughly enjoyed it.
What do you think, Becky, were you at the back of the room listening to that?
Yeah, I thought it was really interesting. I think it's interesting what she said about the like the Kodak moment, the that these people are going to be caught napping.
And of course, going back to what Ian was saying earlier about Tesla, it was a challenger brand, but we're going back 10 years.
And I do think these big car companies were caught napping back then when they didn't think, oh, actually, we we need to start competing with that brand.
They thought Tesla were nothing. They thought that it was never going to make mark on the market.
And actually, all they did was pave the way for all these other brands.
And I think we're so far past it that they I don't know what a lot of these brands can do to save it now.
I don't I do look at brands like Volkswagen, which you would just never have thought that they would ever not be first choice for so many families looking for small or medium sized cars.
It would always be Volkswagen Ford, you're deaf, you're going to have a look at them.
And I just don't think these brands have revolutionised themselves.
They've not moved with the times, which they were so good at doing.
Some of the quotes she came out with some some statistics, she did some research with the AA and we went into detail into that into that research and 13,000 respondents to the survey.
So it was a big, big sample size.
And the stat that shocked me the most was she she said when they asked people if they were confident in buying a used electric car, only 3% of non EV drivers said yes.
I mean, that's extra extraordinary, really, isn't it?
I mean, it's that is a staggering figure.
3% were said they were not confident in buying an electric car.
And she said and then I pressed on that and said what what what is the problem when she said it's batteries, they haven't got the confidence in batteries, even though we're seeing that now they do last longer.
They have got reliability and and the chances of them going wrong is actually quite small.
What do you say?
I'm very surprised by that.
We've got data on battery health.
People are definitely worried about that for sure.
But it isn't holding people back in most cases, mainly because what they're seeing usually with the retailer giving them the information is that the battery health is way better than they think.
We all know that we charge these things all the time because we don't and they fail.
So that's our perception.
We're working in the government working group with those and all the industry bodies to try and create a standard, which we can therefore enable retailers to put on their adverts of use EVs to show the battery health in a very clear and simple UX that the consumer will understand.
Not things like jargon kill what hours people even then don't know what that is.
It's really crucial to understand it if you don't buy any but it's just blurb.
So you need a simplified version of what currently every data set I've seen from every brand is really reassuring.
Usually in the 90% well into 90% of battery health after many thousands of miles.
So years of huge usership.
So I don't think that's such a big issue.
But if I go back to a couple of the other points that I made on the the the sort of speed of movement and so on, two thoughts come to mind.
Firstly, I worked at Renault Nissan during the early noughties and through into just left Renault in the end of 2011 worked at some times in France with Carlos Ghosn.
He ran that group and then over here selling cars myself as a retailer.
So I saw different sides of that equation with leaf being launched and Zoe and so on.
Carlos Ghosn bet that the battle at the barrel of oil at the time you remember backing we talk about a lot just now was going to get above $100.
And it did.
The Iraq war made that happen.
And he said what happens if he gets to 200 it might do if it does everyone's going to need our EVs that didn't happen.
He was way ahead of the curve.
Who knows we may get back there right now.
Unfortunately, he didn't win from being ahead of the curve.
I've worked with other manufacturers and they've said don't worry EV never happened.
So some were caught napping then the regulation happened.
Some applied it got ahead of it.
Some didn't do it so much pulled back on it had other problems to deal with.
Some saw what was happening in China most didn't believe it.
You look in the market now I won't quote the ones that I think are maybe further behind than others.
It's not helped if you have a home market that's not so strong.
But if you look at some Renault, I think they've resurrected themselves brilliantly and with their product.
They've got a Chinese R&D center in Shanghai that's helped them develop the Twingo in 20 months.
That's real China speed.
BMW with the IX3 Neuer Klasso and so on that's coming through a whole wave of cars on their third generation EVs.
Do you remember when we had the Olympics in London 2012?
The I3 and the I8 was everywhere.
They were doing all that.
That's their first generation of car they've learned they were ahead.
Volvo similarly really committed to the journey.
Their EX60 looks amazing.
Gigacast did a software defined vehicle sell to body batteries.
So it's got a 30-40% lower cost and fundamentally the main point here would be that some brands some complain that there's no demand for EVs.
Others generate demand.
And the key point is getting to price parity.
Right now we're 15% the wrong way as I mentioned earlier.
To get to price parity for a manufacturer to make it work, they want margin parity of course to do.
To do that they need to have cost parity.
Now to get that you need to learn from the people who are building their cars differently.
That includes not just the Chinese, Tesla did it.
They resort the car design.
So if you're really challenging yourself on that you can do that in which case you will have a price parity which will generate demand.
So I think that's an equation that some are grappling with better than others for sure.
I agree with you.
Ian, let me ask you about her point about the Kodak of the car industry.
I won't ask you to name who you think will be in it.
I definitely don't think we'll be in it.
Yeah, I'm not going to put you in that position.
But what I am interested in, how many brands are there at the moment like selling in the UK and how many do you think will be left by the end of the year?
I would come back and check the statistics.
I think there are 73 right now and we're expecting 75 by the end of this year.
There were 45 in 2019 turning into 2020 and we think there'll be more than 90 in the next two years.
So the next two years will let's say be 20, 28, 29.
In the space of less than a decade we'll have doubled the number of brands.
So there are definitely more brands competing for a pie that's only got a bit smaller because it's more like 2 million now rather than the 2.3 it was in 2019 or 2.5, 2.6 it was on average before that.
And we're not going to be able to build enough car dealerships.
I know, that's why I think where they all going to go.
Well for car dealers you know what is really good at the moment is there's a rebalancing of the sort of power dynamics between brand and retailer.
You know we're not quite like we are in the US where the franchise rules are very much retailer focused and give them a lot more leverage than the case over here.
But if you're a retailer right now not doing well with a particular brand you in past times would have just had to suffer that because you've got no alternative.
You just hope that they're going to improve that you're going to find a way to improve.
You might diversify into more used cars of another brand or something but it's really difficult.
Whereas today you can say look I need to put another brand in the showroom next to your brand.
And if the brand A doesn't like that because they don't want you to put brand B in you've usually got a bit of leverage.
So look I really need to because the business case in which I built this new CI that you want me to invest in that you said was going to give me this kind of return.
It doesn't work.
It isn't there.
You haven't built the amount of cars.
You don't sell the amount of cars that I need to generate that business case so I need to put this brand in.
So I'm afraid I'm going to do it and you can cough and splutter what you want but I'm going to do it.
So that's a really healthy sort of situation for retailers to be in.
They have alternatives that gives them this bargaining power that I think is really useful.
Yeah putting the power back in the...
Just going to add what I found really interesting about the EV thing was when I did the independent panel.
I said like ask them about what they think about selling EVs.
Do they sell many and they just went no, no one comes and asks us about EV.
And they were like it was probably because we don't stock any and if you don't stock any,
everyone's going to come and buy them.
But it's just this...
I do think 2026 is the year where people have sort of switched onto that dealers are the ones that move these cars.
If you want more people to buy more used electric cars, they need to be in...
Dealers need to be buying them and they need to be trying out and figuring out how they work for them because there is a demand out there for them.
But if you don't have them on your forecourt, they're not going to buy them.
And it's those that 3% people who are moving from petrol to electric in the used market.
They are critical to that.
So it's sort of how do...
I don't even...
Even when the Chinese brands are on it was coming,
what's name is something BT was saying,
well maybe we need to actually put our product in the hands of used car dealers so they can learn about it.
Because they are the people that are going to be moving that next step and working with them in the future.
He threatened to give me one, didn't he?
But said, I needed more training first.
How dare you?
How dare you?
I tell you, I've done that a lot recently.
They've done a lot of work with independence to try and encourage them to understand how to do, for example,
the over the air updates to make sure they've got the latest tech on the vehicles
and they're able to understand how to best sell them and so on.
Definitely something that brands would do well to engage with.
But quickly, Rebecca, is your point.
It's in the public domain.
But many groups and retailers and all sizes ask us things like, what should we do?
And like I mentioned earlier, the diversification is one angle.
EVs is one of those opportunities.
So last year, several groups asked us that.
One that is public is having a move to dial quite significantly is Big Motoring World.
They went from low single digit percentages of stock being electric and sales.
Therefore, to your point, if you don't have it, you're going to sell it being electric.
To mid-20s, I think, of their numbers of overall sales being electric.
They got behind the idea of sourcing those vehicles.
I mentioned that they're more easily available in the sort of open market
than they would have been if cars had been sold in retail channels and come back through part exchange.
The retailers and franchise dealers and so on.
So they then put a deposit contribution of 750 pounds on all their EVs,
put that right across their homepage as a key hook
and had probably too aggressively priced positioning in some cases, you might say,
because they were lower than the base 100, but sold a lot of cars by generating the interest.
So I think, to your point, you can generate that interest and engagement in any segment.
That one is a particularly good example.
It's not the only one if you get behind it.
We very nearly got through the podcast there and without mentioning Big Motoring World,
but then you had to ruin it.
And we must say that if you've been following that case,
we've covered it extensively on the website and the case continues.
Please check it out.
Shall we end there?
Probably we have time for, isn't it?
We've covered a lot of ground though.
We have.
So as that's the end of our story, Ian, who do you think was the winner or what's the best story?
Becca, you've had too many job losses.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
It's James Kodak.
Kodak moment.
Ginny wins it for James for me.
Oh, thank you.
At last, one back on the scoreboard.
6-5 to Becca Stroke-John.
So I'm still behind, but thank you Ian.
That's much appreciated.
Thank you for giving up so much of your time this week for Cardila Magazine.
Much appreciated.
Thank you.
Yeah, nice to see you.
Thank you to both of you for being on the podcast today.
If you want to find out more about any of these stories we mentioned today,
then you can click the links in the show of notes.
Now we'll just head over to CardilaMagazine.co.uk and scroll down to the podcast section.
We will be back again next week.
I don't know if I will probably not, but don't forget to hit subscribe if you've enjoyed it.
Until next time, goodbye.
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