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Blog Entries about "blog"
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Our crystal ball
An important feature of our reports – we are launching three new reports this year - is the forecast section where we look into our crystal ball and project future market trends. In the past, this has proved relatively easy and it was just a matter of plugging key data into a computer model. But the current situation has us scratching our heads.
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Have electric vehicles stalled?
A year ago we published a weighty tome about electric vehicles (EVs) which we assumed at the time would go out of date fairly quickly because of fast-moving technological developments.
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Accessorise! New car accessories research
It goes without saying that sales executives will make at least one attempt to sell accessories to new and used car customers. And as any sales executive knows, the best time to sell accessories is when a customer signs up for a car.
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The horse’s mouth
Research is all about bringing together facts to help answer crucial questions. In the case of the auto retail industry, research typically means ‘market research’. It’s about the market background, customers, the supply structure, the market size and trends, and so on.
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Hot, Thirsty and Crowded: Are the New Vehicle Technologies the Answer?
Dr. John Wormald, noted consultant, co-founder of the advisory firm Autopolis, author of some of the most authoritatively critical books on the car industry and an inspiration to the directors of Trend Tracker since our foundation, examines this critical question in a new free-to-download report, available here:
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MOT test regime change
When analysing the car servicing and repair market drivers, the ‘usual suspects’ include: car parc size and age profile; average car mileages; build quality trends; service intervals and content; new car warranties; labour rates …. with political and legislative factors barely a consideration. However, that could be about to change with the government’s review of the MOT test regime.
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Independents winning more work
First published in Auto Retail Network (July 2011), Toby Procter uses the newly published Castrol Professional Car Service and Repair Trend Tracker 2011 report to reveal for the first time how the independent workshop sector has
increased its grip on car servicing, maintenance and repairs (SMR) since the recession. -
Driving workshop business
A large proportion of the research for the 2011 Castrol Professional Car Service and Repair Trend Tracker report is an extensive survey of motorists. We have run some elements of this consumer survey since 1994, interviewing 1,000 motorists every month.
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Losing your grip on servicing, maintenance and repair
This month we launched the 2011 edition of the Castrol Professional Car Service and Repair Trend Tracker. It has been published in various forms since 1995 based on an array of primary research including a monthly consumer survey of 1,000 motorists.
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With a fair (economic) wind …
At the Auto Retail Network used car profit clinic in Loughborough last month, I presented our preliminary forecasts for used car market volumes up to 2016. To produce a forecast for any of the auto retail markets we create a computer model incorporating the market drivers. Usually our forecasts are quite accurate: for example, our used car market forecast in 2002 was within 6% for 2003 to 2007.
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Tesco finally makes it into the motor trade
For the past 25 years, there have been regular scares in the motor trade concerning the threat of incursion by one of the massive retailers capable, at least in theory, of combining financial clout and money lending capacity with real estate and a liking for the F&I profits associated with car sales. Tesco has been treated as the leading potential contender, if only because of its pre-eminence among UK retailers.
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The cautious used car buyer
Our new report on the used car market will be published later this year. We have started the research which includes a consumer survey of 10,000 motorists - a brand new addition to the used car report we have completed biennially since 1994.
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Been here before? Precedents for EVs and energy upheaval
A new WWF report, ‘Electric avenues: driving home the case for electric vehicles’, calculates that ending the UK’s dependence on fossil fuels means at least 1.7 million electric vehicles on the country’s roads by 2020, and around 6.4 million by 2030.
Obtaining the effect on climate change urged by the WWF also entails decarbonising the power supply these EVs would be using, a task made no easier by the effect of the Japanese nuclear disaster on planning for the replacement of coal fired power stations. -
SMR market down, petrol costs up less than you might think
A reflection on topical news was prompted by the work under way to complete the 2011 edition of the Car Service and Repair Trend Tracker report, of which more anon.
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New thoughts on re-manufacturing?
Recently we had an invitation to visit the China International Remanufacturing Forum to be held in April in Hangzhou, 100 miles southwest of Shanghai. The seminars available over the two-day conference emphasise China’s leading role in automotive parts remanufacturing and include reviews of European market demand for remanufactured parts.
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All right on the night?
Before our latest report on electric vehicles (EVs) was released in January, it fell to me to proof read all 282 pages. Although proof reading is a very detailed activity, you don’t lose sight of the big picture and the picture is very ‘big’ for EVs.
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Needed for EVs to save the world: more R&D, less wishful thinking
In December 2010 the UK government’s advisory Committee on Climate Change recommended cutting the UK's GHG emissions by 60% relative to 1990 levels (46% relative to current levels), by 2030. The UK would then require a further 62% GHG emissions reduction from 2030 to meet the 2050 target already legislated for in the UK’s Climate Change Act.
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The Weather Effect
It’s difficult to imagine how research can be affected by the weather, but we experienced two serious delays to our schedule in December. Throughout the month we had appointments to analyse service job cards at independent garages and franchised dealerships – working towards the April 2011 edition of the Car Service & Repair Trend Tracker. Quite simply, snow prevented us from driving to workshops and we have now fallen a month behind.
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Electric vehicles: Are we serious?
In November I visited the inaugural ‘eco2’ transport show at London’s Earls Court, where I found the hall on the third and final day sadly empty of visitors. Soon after our visit to Earls Court, Bosch released its research report ‘Bosch: Driving Green Britain’.
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EVs: The challenges ahead for retailers
Auto Retail Network (www.auto-retail.com) published a feature by Trend Tracker's Toby Procter in the January 2011 issue of Auto Retail Bulletin, on the likely impacts of EVs on franchised dealers charged with selling and fixing them. You can see the article here, with the publisher's kind permission.
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Subsidy junkies or realists?
Daimler CEO Dieter Zetsche was reported by Bloomberg to have said on 11 November at a corporate CSR event in Stuttgart that “Governments should offer consumers financial incentives to buy electric vehicles to help offset the extra cost for manufacturers to build the cars.”
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Only 5% of new car buyers are influenced by green credentials
Research released on 19.11.2010 by Bosch revealed that despite 69% of drivers claiming to do their best for the environment, only 5% of motorists buying a new car would be influenced by a car’s ‘green’ credentials.
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EVs: When to turn off the subsidy tap?
Over the past century the use of cars has evolved to create an emergent organism which has oil in its bloodstream, and the auto industry at its heart, the supply chain, distribution channels and aftermarket as limbs. Its tentacles reach along the roads which control where we go and where and how we live, into the banks that finance the cars, and the governments that tax them and finance the infrastructure they need.
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Could GE help EVs bust out of the green niche?
GE-WHIZ! GE has confirmed that it will buy 25,000 EVs by 2015 for its own fleet and through its Capital Fleet Services business – the biggest-ever single EV order. Could the global elec-tech. and asset finance giant bring profits for EV suppliers within sight?
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Where has all the work gone?
Auto Retail Network ran two aftersales workshops at the beginning of October and it was our job to present the latest information on the state of the market, which in these tough times was not the most upbeat of assessments. Once we had elucidated the problems, the delegates were tasked with finding solutions as they rotated around four workshops facilitated by experts in relevant areas.
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The new normal for motor retail
We’ve had a credit crunch, a recession, a new government and an emergency budget – all in the space of three years. So is that it? Will everything go back to ‘normal’ now? Yes, but probably not the ‘normal’ we experienced before. To use a current buzz-phrase, it will be a ‘New Normal’. Before we describe the ‘New Normal’, let’s dwell for a moment on what has happened.
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Pessimism and optimism
The least fun part of research is the statistics especially the maths required to work out cause and effect. We employ experts to do all this sort of stuff for us who render forth in what seems like a foreign language full of mysterious words and phrases like ‘t-tests’, ‘significance’ and ‘correlation’.
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The remarkable resilience of retailers
At least some of Trend Tracker’s analysts, myself included, have shown a glass-half-empty attitude towards the standard-model new car franchise system, as some of our past white papers have attested. But we have to admit that earlier reports of its impending demise were more than a little premature. The system isn’t bust yet, indeed it survived the 2008 recession rather better than many might have expected.
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Rare earth metals to get rarer faster?
The New York Times reported on Thursday (22.09.10) that the Chinese government had officially denied halting exports of rare earth metals to Japan, in retaliation for the detention of a Chinese trawler skipper in a long-standing territorial dispute. China had already cut export quotas for the cerium, lanthanum, neodymium etc. etc. on which Toyota et al depend for their NiMH batteries, permanent magnet electric motors and much else besides, and has over 90% of the world’s known rare earth metals deposits.
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Forecasting the Future 2009-2015
Essentially the Car Service and Repair Trend Tracker Update 2010 combines three longstanding research reports into one. First, and perhaps best known, is the Service Trend Tracker. Published since 1995, this report is based on extensive consumer surveys. Every month, 1,000 motorists are asked about where they last had their car serviced. The result is ‘servicing retention’ by make of car and provider of servicing – dealers, independents and DIY – a measure we have always found to mirror, very closely, the industry standard ‘service retention’ that includes all types of mechanical work including routine servicing.
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Grossing up gross margins
At this time of year, dealer group PLC’s publish their half-year results – informative barometers of the past six months. Also at this time of year private limited companies with financial years ending last December must post their accounts to Companies House.
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Small percentages add up to bigger percentages
We make no apologies for returning to the subject of parts wholesaling again because it appears, judging by our workload, that this sector is seeing a real renaissance in the franchised sector. However our work with several vehicle manufacturers, looking at network performance on their behalf, has highlighted one interesting problem – staff lacking basic knowledge.
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Automotive Mark-ups & Margins
If you buy something for £100, what do you have to sell it for to make a gross profit margin of 33%? The answer is, of course, £150. Certainly every reader of Auto Retail Network’s Bulletin where this article was first published, would have got this simple example of ‘mark-ups and margins’ correct. However, our experience running training courses for sales executives and aftersales personnel is that the mathematical skills of dealer staff are often sadly lacking, and many would come up with £133 as the answer – how would yours fare? Furthermore, our research on gross margins strongly suggests that this lack of knowledge has an impact on profits.
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Range Rover Evoque
From time to time, former Trend Tracker analyst and now business academic Dr. Michael Wynn-Williams delivers us his personal view of events and issues in the automotive sector. Happily this week sees Michael letting us air his view of the Evoque, the latest extension to the Land Rover brand portfolio. Whatever road-bound 4x4s in general evoke to you, I hope you’ll enjoy his robust critique of a company that has “thrown off its old mud-plugging ways,” but has nevertheless “slowly become bogged down in its models and brands.”
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Pricing strategies for a declining market
In a month's time, Ford is cutting the RRPs on all its medium and small cars, as it did in April with its large ones. And it has cut dealer margins too, with the stated aim of making “the whole purchase process more transparent and the value of Ford cars more obvious."
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Are new cars overpriced?
Last month in this column, we shared our views on the scrappage scheme and how this had influenced new car sales in the short-term. New car sales volumes are, of course, important in their own right but also exert a crucial influence on the used car market and aftersales. Longer term we believe that new car sales volumes will respond in a similar fashion to the recoveries experienced after previous recessions. One potential obstacle to this recovery is the possibility that new cars have become overpriced - something that What Car? magazine raises in its latest issue.
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Do Quangoids Dream of Electric Cars?
(With apologies to Philip K. Dick.) In July six electric Mitsubishi i-MiEVs will arrive in the North East for trials run by Cenex's Low Carbon Vehicle Procurement Programme at a leasing cost of £137,450 over four years, plus (we guess) around £6.5m for installing 1,300 charging points. The latter approximate figure is included in the last government's 'Plugged in Places' programme, channelled via the regional development agency One North East. In London, 20 Toyota Prius plug-in hybrids on lease will arrive on the fleets of various public bodies in London, courtesy of Toyota and EDF Energy. Similar trials are under way in the Midlands, funded by the Technology Strategy Board and Advantage West Midlands. Correction: funded by all of us.
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Charting The Decline in SMR Work
Download and read our latest aftersales article, published in the June 2010 issue of Auto Retail Networks' Bulletin.
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Black and Blue in the Bayou
Dr Peter Wells of Cardiff Business School's Centre for Automotive Industry Research (co-author of Car Futures - Rethinking the automotive industry beyond the American model”, available from Trend Tracker), speculated recently in Automotiveworld.com's Environment Weekly that BP's fiasco could prove a tipping point in the evolution of a market for electric vehicles. Market and public sentiment can turn bad on a dime, and BP's bonds have dropped to junk status, although with oil at $75 a barrel, BP is still gushing cash flow and can easily afford the $billion+ Gulf clean-up cost, and pay a dividend to its US shareholders.
