The new car market is heading for chaos next year, warned the boss of one leading dealer group.
It will face a ‘crunch’ year in 2026 trying to meet ‘wholly unrealistic’ electric car targets, Vertu Motors CEO Robert Forrester said on Nick Ferrari Show on LBC radio.
Next year, car makers and dealers will have to register a third of their sales as battery electric models and it is already struggled to hit 23%.
“We’re in the middle of a vice of taxation and regulation – there are numerous taxes and they’re going up on cars, and we’ve got an electrification agenda where the government is setting wholly unrealistic targets to move the new car and van markets to battery electric vehicles,” he said.
“The targets are completely unrealistic. They are putting an immense amount of pressure on the whole automotive sector – from parts providers to car factories to retailers, and there’s going to be a crunch. It’s going to come next year when we’ll see a rationing of petrol and diesel cars.”
He went on, “We’ll probably see manufacturers holding back supply to avoid huge fines for missing targets.
“We saw it last year – people could see the petrol/diesel car on the forecourt, but we weren’t allowed to actually deliver the cars.
‘We’ll see that again next year, and we’ll see real problems for the manufacturers in trying to make money, because they’re having to discount battery electric vehicles to an unending degree.’
Under the ZEV mandate, carmakers face fines of £12,000 per vehicle if they miss their EV sales quota — reduced from £15,000 last year. But Forrester said this still puts them in an impossible position.
“If you’re faced with a fine of £12,000 or not selling a car, and you don’t make £12,000 as a manufacturer, you probably won’t sell the car,” he explained. “So we’ll see holding back on supply of petrol and diesel cars to try and get to these percentages.”
The situation could lead to further price discounting to move sales of BEVs while petrol and diesel models may see prices firming up and all this will be reflected in used values down the line.
Some buyers are also taking advantage of the fact more used EVs are now coming on sale and are more realistically priced for their budgets but it’s all very dependent on mileage, maintenance and manufacturing so there will be some big losers as well as winners and some discounting is likely as dealers want to wrap up sales and earn commissions from finance providers.
