Presenter and Producer at The Motoring Podcast. UK Car of the Year Judge. Member of the Northern Group of Motoring Writers
Some interesting, if unsurprising things that came from FT Future of the Car event. However, I am, honestly, shocked at the point in the comments that OEMs are looking to make their supply chains more resilient. I ask, what on earth have they been doing since 2020? On the Motoring Podcast we have talked, many, many times about the basics of business, including supply chain and purchasing 101, yet here in 2024 after so much disruption in the last four years, there is talk about being more secure. Absolutely baffling.
Few surprises from industry leaders on Day 1 of the FT Future Of The Car event. 💠 One way or another, OEMs are not going to pay ZEV penalties in the UK; I’ve been saying since October last year that car markets “at risk of substantially overshooting their ICE mix in 2024 will cap UK sales and divert production to other, profitable, markets, rather than borrowing or trading”, and what I heard today reinforces this view. 💠 With early adopters largely exhausted, there is only so much the industry can do to drive increases in BEV sales in Europe while the product remains a lot more expensive, continues to have poor perceived range compared to consumer expectations of how far a car “should” be able to travel [if customers were truly happy with a real-world range of 300 km, OEMs would be building hybrids with 16L fuel tanks – they aren’t], and takes too long to charge on the go. 💠 Part of this will be continued product innovation, with 500km range and 10 minutes to add 100km seemingly the new sweet spot being targeted; the industry continues to live in hope of significant government stimulus / subsidies for retail buyers, although it’s hard to imagine this being forthcoming; there is an aspiration to address the Chinese manufacturing cost advantage head on through radical cost reduction; but a major focus remains convincing customers that they really should want a BEV after all. Levels of price discounting currently seen in European markets are unsustainable beyond the short term. 💠 Actually experiencing a BEV first hand is one of the keys to winning hearts and minds of retail customers who can’t take advantage of the tax breaks available to fleet drivers. The notion of “try before you buy” could start to significantly change what a test drive looks like, for instance with prospective customers offered the opportunity to lease a vehicle for a month to see how they get on with it. On the fleet side, successful businesses will be able to help their customers see how BEVs can add wider value to their business operations, rather than simply being a like-for-like replacement for ICE vans. #FTcar [continued in comments, below...]