Feature
Chinese new entrants are hitting the UK market with gusto. Jack Carfrae asks how they are making their mark on fleets.
New order “D
rivers will always vote with their pockets, so if it’s cheap enough, they’ll take it. End of.” That is AFP vice chair, Lorna McAtear,
neatly summing up why company car drivers like EVs so much.
It stands to reason, then, that the torrent of new Chinese brands is destined for greatness in fleet. Most specialise in EVs and PHEVs so tick the tax box, lower production and battery costs mean P11Ds are almost universally cheaper than anything from established brands and the UK’s lack of EV import tariffs makes it an attractive market.
In its Road to 2030 report, Auto Trader claimed new entrants “dominated by Chinese brands” could account for up to 25% (400,000 cars) of the UK EV market by the turn of the decade, and said UK dealers stocking a Chinese new entrant car rose from 34 in January to 173 by the end of 2024. Such companies are clearly off to a flying start, but their sheer numbers and differing approaches suggest some are more likely to stick around than others, and some believed fleet would be an easy route into the UK. Industry consultant and former Hyundai CEO, Tony Whitehorn, who has worked with new entrants, explains why it is not that simple.
22 | March/April 2025 |
www.businesscar.co.uk
“There was one company, that approached me and said, ‘we’d like to come into the UK, but we just want to get in there gradually and not necessarily have a big network, so we’ll go straight into fleet… not realising how just how complex fleet was. A couple of Chinese manufacturers asked me about that.
“I explained to them that what fleets want is accessibility to aftersales and parts – that’s fundamental to them, because they cannot have vehicles off the road, and that surprised a number of companies.”
Operators and leasing firms support Whitehorn’s view that fleets require a solid aftersales service. Chris Chandler, principal consultant at Lex Autolease (its parent company, Lloyds, funds Ora and Xpeng), says it is very much a prerequisite. “We have to consider [a brand’s] support services: maintenance, repair, the costs that feed into that and the network that exists to enable them. At the end of the day… our customers are leasing vehicles from us, and even though we don’t build them, they’re still deemed our service.”
“If you get a fault and it can’t be fixed over the air, where do you take that vehicle?” adds McAtear, “that’s something fleet managers really have to bear in mind, because the nature of a company car driver is: ‘I make a phone call, you fix it for me. If you tell me I’ve got to drive 100 miles to take that car for a service, I’m going to tell you where to go’.
Above: Lorna McAtear, vice chair, AFP
“That is the attitude and mentality that we deal with. Why are we dealing with that? Because we're used to having a dealership on our doorstep.”
rudall30; Vit-Mar/
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