When discussing the customer buying journey with a few members over the last few weeks, the subject of vehicle handover has come up. Over the last few months, there has been a lot of innovation to allow a socially distanced handover, either with the salesperson outside the car, or through using video to give the customer a self-help guide.

In my blog last week, I referred to the challenges that complexity brings to automotive distribution, in terms of the customer journey and being able to match a customer requirement with an available vehicle. A conversation later in the week with a good friend in the industry, Philip Nothard at Cox Automotive, brought us onto a related topic of improving stock turn in the used car business.

The car industry has moved on a long way from the days of Henry Ford when he recognised the negative impact of product variety on his manufacturing process.

To many commentators, the official announcement last week by Volvo Cars that they would move to an ‘online only’ model (their press release headline) coincident with a move to only pure electric models being available from 2030 marked the end of the dealership.

It feels like there is a barely a day that passes without seeing a reference to a car manufacturer who is anticipating ballooning revenues from connected services over the next decade. In a number of cases, this includes setting up a new business unit to offer these services.

My blog this week is a couple days late due to some urgent client commitments, but on this subject, I could delay a year or two, and it would still be topical. However, there have been a number of stories in the press recently which all in one way or the other related to the potential growth of hydrogen as fuel source for cars and other forms of transport.

The aftermarket is inherently slow to change – analogies with the time it takes for a supertanker to change course are common

On Thursday last week, Auto1 made a spectacular debut on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, raising €1.8 billion, with a first day surge to 49% above the floatation price. The IPO put a billion Euros into the Auto1 war chest, which the company has said will be used to accelerate their development of their B2C offer – AutoHero.

There are many challenges to the implementation of fully autonomous cars, able to operate totally without a driver on public roads, so the announcement last week that autox – a venture backed by Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba had launched a driverless robotaxi on the streets of Shenzhen in Southern China was significant.

Two weeks ago, I wrote about Apple and Tesla and their respective involvement in the car industry. Apple is obviously a tech stock by virtue of its current product offer, and Tesla is treated as one, rather than part of the traditional auto industry. We have become familiar with the high valuations achieved on the stock markets by companies like Tesla and newer start-ups such as Nio and Rivian.

Created in 1905, the ‘Hôtel de France’ is located in the centre of France and, to be precise, in a charming little rural village named ‘La-Chartre-sur-le-Loir’ which has a population of 1,425. Although the hotel appears to be beautiful with a typical ‘Art déco’ façade, it is nothing really special…

Today, a deal was finalised between Hedin Bil, the 13th ranked dealer group in Europe, and Ford Motor Company for the sale of the Swedish Ford national sales company (NSC) to Hedin Bil. As a result, Hedin Bil will not only be the largest dealer for Ford in Sweden, but also act as the independent distributor for the brand.

Online sales channels are not new, they existed decades ago, remember the Vauxhall online sales channel back in 1999?

Image from the Financial Times

Welcome back to 2021 – starting off, much like 2020 ended, except that we now have Covid vaccination programmes. I hope that you had some downtime over the holiday period and have returned refreshed for whatever the new year brings. I did consider making this first blog of the year a personal prediction of what some of the main events might be, but I felt that would be setting myself up to fail, so instead turn to a couple stories that have been doing the rounds over the holiday period related to Apple and Tesla.

…the used car business was straightforward. Take in some trade-ins, buy some cars from the local auction and your mates in the trade, quick polish and stick them on your forecourt with a price sticker until the punters rolled up.

As the pandemic first hit Europe in the Spring, and lockdown closed showrooms, dealers looked to innovate quickly to maintain contact with customers, and in many cases, continue to sell cars remotely and fulfil these sales through contactless handover and delivery.

My Tesla Model S finally went back to the lease company at the end of last week, which makes this a good time to reflect on what I learned from running this car for 3½ years and 80,000 km.

The last week was a grim one for anyone involved in what we call high street retail in the UK – the mainstream department stores and fashion stores that are the anchor of big shopping malls and take up many of the store fronts in a typical urban city centre shopping area.

Over the last couple weeks, a repeated theme has been around mergers, acquisitions and cooperations in the auto industry.

Today, Capgemini have published a report advocating the transition to an agency model for distribution networks, supported by consumer and dealer surveys in Europe and China.