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new entrants considered Motability and rental easy ways to get a foothold which, to a point, is not unfounded, but nuance is once again the stumbling block.


“Some have gone into Motability big time,” he explains, “the reason for that is, it is relatively easy to get into and you can sell the cars fairly cheap. However, Motability have now caught a bit of a cold on electric vehicles. They were accounting for something like nearly 30% of all EVs at one stage last year. They’ve pulled back from that and put their residual values up.” Motability – which reported a £564.6 million pre-tax loss for 2024 – confirmed that new entrants including BYD and Omoda had joined its scheme and that it doubled its number of EV customers to more than 70,000 last year. It said it accounted for 16% of UK BEV registrations in 2024 and cited a BVRLA announcement from September stating that used EV values had fallen 50% over the previous 24 months.


“We therefore have to carefully select vehicles that we believe will maintain their residual value to ensure the long-term viability of the scheme,” it said in a statement.


Whitehorn continues: “Motability and self-drive hire… both require a lot of support, but they do get cars out on the road. The issue here is that residual values are being hit quite hard, because the Chinese manufacturers have gone into those two routes quite severely. A lot of the self-drive


“[New entrants] need to set up a traditional national sales company with an indigenous person at the head... That has worked very well [for MG].”


hire companies are just looking at the holding cost, because obviously, they don’t take those cars on risk – they’re on buyback.


“A lot of Chinese manufacturers don’t really understand buyback, and they’re saying, ‘why do we need to buy these cars back? We don’t know what they are going to be worth in six months/a year’s time,’ and that is a challenge. So, there’s a bit of naivety by the new entrants coming into the fleet market.”


Then there is the subject of the product range to be addressed. No manufacturer, new or established, can be blamed for developing a mid- sized SUV but, frankly, they have overdone it. Fleets want and need cars in all shapes and sizes – the recently departed MG5 EV was popular, because it was the only electric estate car on the block – and, BYD Dolphin aside, McAtear thinks choice is lacking.


“[Manufacturers] are actually competing against themselves, let alone against the new ones coming in. They’ve brought in vehicles that are exactly the same in that mid-segment. That’s probably where they get the sweet spot between margin and loss, but what they haven’t realised is that they diluting that market and the market share they are after, unless somebody goes pop and leaves.


“You still need some city cars. You need some executive cars. Ford have pulled out from doing the Fiesta and some of their other models, so who’s in that space?”


Finally, there is the court of public opinion, which applies just as much to new entrants to the market as to electric cars in general, and McAtear believes that allaying misinformation that is spread in this area, is a big part of today’s fleet manager’s job.


“The biggest problem we have is that social media is truth – regardless. It doesn’t matter what goes out there, if somebody’s chatting to somebody else who read that this person did this, that company’s done that and you can’t buy from there, then that is the truth – whether it is or it isn’t.


“The job of a fleet manager now is to dispel what they’ve heard, because their mate down the pub was right or that BBC article was right. It is an interesting challenge, because some of those new entrants are tarred with an unfair bias.”


Above: BYD is playing the long game, building a strong dealer network while rivals struggle with fleet complexities. 24 | March/April 2025 | www.businesscar.co.uk


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