Peter McDonald
There’s looking forward – and then there’s looking beyond what the eye can see. The Ohme man ponders what might happen in automotive, not only in the long-term, but even further than that!
The theme of this latest issue of EV Fleet World is ‘Vehicles on the Horizon’, but I’d like to take a step back and widen the horizons a little. I want to look not just at the vehicles on the horizon but also the industry as a whole – and also at why the UK market is perhaps of far more importance than you might at first imagine.
The UK is the fourth largest car market for EVs in the world (behind China, the US and Germany). In Europe, it’s second only to Germany in terms of outright EV sales, with more than 276,000 EVs sold up until the end of August this year – 29.5% up on 2024.
The UK is also one of the most interesting and most challenging markets for car brands. The reason is that this volume is combined with possibly a higher level of competition than most other markets too.
With no home-grown brands dominating in the way that they do in other European countries, it makes the UK a very open market for newcomers – as the latest wave of Chinese brands has proven. Take BYD as an example. In less than two and a half years, BYD has already expanded to 100 UK franchise sites and has already sold more than 24,000 cars this year.
It's not alone either. MG, XPeng, Omoda, GWM, Jaecoo and Leapmotor are already making their presence felt on British roads and there’s more to come from Changan, Chery, Geely, Nio, Zeekr and more. The EV sector plays to their strengths too. Every study into customer brand loyalty shows that it’s considerably lower for customers buying an EV than for a traditional ICE vehicle, making buyers more likely to consider a new brand.
And that’s especially so given that the Chinese brands are making such strides in EV technology generally. Earlier this year, BYD unveiled a 1,000kW charging system that could add 249 miles of range in just five minutes – faster than any current EV charging solution. And in September it set a new global production car top speed record with its Yangwang U9 managing an eye-watering 308mph.
The UK is the fourth largest car market for EVs in the world. In Europe, it’s second only to Germany in terms of outright EV sales
Lessons to learn
But despite these unquestionably huge technological strides for EVs, the Chinese brands can still learn two main things from the UK market. The first is just how crucial fleet customers are to brands here in the UK and, in turn, how important residual value management is for those fleet managers and car companies.
The second lesson is to do with parking. Private driveways for owner parking are rare in many Chinese towns and cities, meaning that many EV drivers use public chargers to charge their cars. For the UK of course, it’s the total reverse. While public chargers remain popular in the UK, most EVs will spend the vast majority of charging sessions at home.
The chief difference with that is that the outright speed of charging such as that mentioned earlier isn’t really that crucial. What is more important is the ability for the EV driver in question to be able to charge their car at home using a dynamic energy tariff to considerably reduce their running costs – savings that are also passed onto the fleet manager when charging for work miles.
Charging at home is not only more cost-effective, it’s far more convenient and saves on employee downtime and is also far more reliable compared to public charging. In Europe it’s by far the more popular option for charging an EV compared to using a public charger.
So while China may be one of the world innovators in terms of EVs and EV technology, there’s no question that the UK is one of the world innovators when it comes to its energy market and also with regard to home charging of EVs. This has to be taken into account for all car manufacturers going forward, as that innovation progresses with energy tariffs becoming more and more complex and the need for a home charger that is also able to cope with that level of complexity.
Fleet managers will want their car choices and also their drivers to be future-proofed against those innovations as well. A great example, arriving at the start of 2026, is the Sustainability Disclosure Requirements I mentioned in my last column. With Ohme’s EV chargers, fleet managers can get a real-world CO₂ saving for all of the individual home charges of their EVs on their fleet. Without that detailed level of information, they’d have to use an industry standard that would be less accurate.
With all of that in mind, the UK car market and UK fleet managers are in a unique position to make the most of this unusual situation both in terms of introducing new brands and new opportunities, but also in terms of what learnings we can offer other markets. And that future horizon looks brighter than ever.
Peter McDonald is mobility director at Ohme. Prior to his current role, he spent two decades working for automotive manufacturers including Nissan, SEAT and the wider Volkswagen Group.
