Remarketing
published in April. When asked ‘What performance information would be most important when looking into a used EV?’, 73% of the 2,776 respondents said, ‘battery health and remaining capacity’, and ranked it above five other metrics. Also in April, Polestar said used Polestar 2s sold through its dealer network would include an SoH certificate.
“Since they went live, one of our customers had a 300% increase in ad views on their EV listings,” says Oliver Phillpott, Generational’s co-founder, of dealers using the service. “Another says having the battery health reading is instrumental in about 50% of the cars they sell.”
There are questions about where and when the tests take place and who in the remarketing chain is responsible for them, as Philip Nothard, Cox’s insight director, explains.
“One of the things that seems to be in a lot of conversations at the minute is the timing of it, and who takes the cost.”
He likens it to industry efforts to catch illegal mileage blockers – again by plugging a device into the OBD port. The time and expense were allegedly such that some suppliers said it was not worth it and offered to take the vehicles back if a problem were later discovered.
Usage-based pricing is common – Generational does it, as does vehicle data app Carly, which also supplies SoH tests. Phillpott says his firm’s testing kits cost less than £100 and the tests themselves are “broadly mid/low tens of pounds per test as an entry point, and that number can come down with volume”. Carly launched its B2B service in the UK in April, and the European prices published on its website in May spanned €8.50 to €11.90 per test, depending on the plan.
As for timing, there is a strong case for ‘the later,
the better’, which speaks more to the certificate’s current chief purpose of instilling confidence than illustrating minute battery degradation, if any, over a few weeks. However, logistics could dictate that it is easier to do the check earlier.
“A rental company raised this with me and said they’d do the test at end of use,” says Nothard. “Say it’s 88% on 1 May. That car will then go into the wholesale environment, and it might take a month to sell, so you’re into June. Then it goes into the retail environment. How relevant is the test from 1 May by the time you get to the end of June?” SoH specialists point out the speed and ease of the tests. Generational’s YouTube demonstration video shows it takes about a minute, and Phillpott adds that most businesses in the sector already use mobile devices for vehicle inspections.
“As long as it’s done within 30 days of the car being sold, from a consumer perspective, that’s reliable, and it gives them [buyers] peace of mind,” adds Daniel Meeghan, Carly’s country manager. He believes certificates could be generated both when vehicles are defleeted as part of the remarketing proposition, and again by dealers, especially if the car is sold as part of a used approved programme a la Polestar (we asked Polestar to confirm when and by whom its SoH tests were conducted, but it did not supply answers before our deadline).
In April, the Association of Fleet Professionals called for “an industry backed battery health check” as part of efforts to assuage used car buyers’ fears around EVs and produce consistent results. Europe already has one, in the form of the Car Remarketing Association Europe’s (CARA) approved battery health check, to which specialist providers (there were three at the time of writing: Aviloo, Moba and Laika Lab) must apply for accreditation.
Phillpott said Generational was applying for CARA accreditation when we spoke in May and Meeghan said Carly planned to.
It may also become possible to access battery SoH through vehicles’ infotainment systems, as you can with smartphones, and the EU and UK governments have expressed interest in mandating accessibility, which could challenge the business model of testing specialists.
Speaking at a Vehicle Remarketing Association meeting in July last year, Abdul Chowdhury, head of vehicle policy at the Office for Zero Emissions Vehicles, said the principles had been outlined in Labour’s Automotive Sector Plan, published in October 2023, and highlighted the government’s work on the United Nations Global Technical Regulation (GTR) Number 22 on EV batteries. “GTR 22 provides the requirement for a battery state of health monitor which is in an easily accessible manner, such as through the vehicle’s dashboard,” said Chowdhury at the time. SoH certificates have already made a splash in remarketing and, if momentum continues, the percentages they convey could end up in the same league as age, mileage, spec and other key used car metrics. The logical next steps would be a CARA- style scheme for the UK, to ensure consistency across mushrooming SoH testers, and industry- standard inclusion in online used car adverts as filterable criteria (they can already be found in the image carousels of some classified ads). Questions about costs and logistics remain valid, but the signs so far suggest used car buyers respond well to the certificates, and ‘demand’ has always been a watchword for the used car market. Give them time to mature, and they could start to have more than an anecdotal impact on residual values.
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www.businesscar.co.uk | May/June 2025 | 27
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