David Kateley, Director of Automobile at Suzuki UK, offered a straightforward read of the current market on the OEM panel at Car Dealer Live last month. Three things are happening at once, he said: competition, confusion and conflict. More brands are competing for the same buyers. Consumers are navigating more technology, more choice and more conflicting messages than ever before. And manufacturers are trying to stay true to long-term plans while reacting to short-term EV targets and market pressures.
It captured the tone and themes of the sessions that followed. A few are worth calling out.
Auto Trader's Ian Plummer put the scale of the shift into context. EV buyers are only half as loyal as petrol buyers: just 22% purchase the same brand for their next vehicle, compared to 44% of petrol buyers. One in four new enquiries on Auto Trader is now for an electric vehicle, and 62% of the population say they would consider one for their next car, according to Auto Trader's Road to 2030 research.
Lorraine Bishton, Managing Director of XPeng UK, pointed to what this means in practice. Buyers who have historically been loyal to one manufacturer are now reassessing as they move into EVs, giving brands a genuine chance to talk to people who may never previously have considered them. For manufacturers and retailers that can reach those buyers early and with a clear proposition, it is a meaningful shift in consumer behaviour that many brands have yet to fully act on.
Image from Car Dealer Live show
The Chinese challenger panel brought together Steve Beattie of BYD UK, Suraj Narayanamurthy of Omoda Jaecoo UK, Farrell Hsu of Chery and Greg Wapling of Geely UK. All four pointed to strong momentum in the UK, and Cox Automotive's research, commissioned for Car Dealer Live, confirmed it: new market entrants accounted for 9.83% of registrations in January 2026, up from 2.65% the previous January. There are now more than 75 car brands competing in the UK market.
Nicola Dobson, Managing Director of Peugeot UK, framed the broader picture well in her session with James Batchelor. Increased competition from Chinese manufacturers is positive for consumers and healthy for the market, she said, forcing legacy brands to reassess strategies and raise their game. Beattie and Narayanamurthy made a similar point from their own perspective: product quality and technology, not pricing alone, is what is driving customer interest, and UK buyers are often genuinely surprised when they engage with the vehicles in person.
Cox Automotive's consumer research also shows where the work remains for any brand competing in this space. Only 15% of drivers who do not already own a new-entrant vehicle would consider one for their next purchase. The most commonly cited concerns are vehicle quality (53%), technology reliability (50%) and resale value (34%). Any brand that addresses those concerns directly with buyers who are still undecided will make ground faster than those relying on presence or marketing spend alone.
A theme that came up across several of the sessions I attended was the gap between the volume of leads coming in and what actually happens to them. Impel's mystery shop study of Car Dealer Top 100 retailers made for uncomfortable viewing. 33% of all customer engagement happens outside business hours. The median response time out of hours is more than 13 hours. 34% of dealers stopped following up after a single contact attempt. And 12% of enquiries never received a tailored reply at all.
Impel's research was clear that the cause is not a lack of effort, but a capacity issue. Human teams cannot maintain 24/7 responsiveness across every lead without something breaking. And when follow-up fails, the sale does not wait.
Keyloop's research adds weight to the same point. 94% of automotive retailers acknowledge significant operational inefficiencies in their businesses. For franchised dealers, those inefficiencies translate to a potential margin uplift loss of £800,000 per year, driven by disconnected systems and siloed data adding friction throughout the customer journey. The franchised dealer panel painted a similar picture: margins under sustained pressure since 2024, rising costs and limited room to reduce headcount without affecting the customer experience. The retailers best placed for the year ahead are those using technology to reduce that friction, not just to report on it.
The threads running through every session were consistent: the shift in buyer behaviour driven by electrification, the pressure on margins at every level of the market, the importance of pricing and sourcing decisions grounded in live data, and the gap between leads received and leads properly followed up. Whether a brand is established or new to the UK, those fundamentals apply equally.
But there is also a bigger picture worth noting. Despite the GfK Consumer Confidence Index sitting at -21 in March 2026, nearly half of UK households dipping into savings, and the Strait of Hormuz crisis pushing petrol past 150p per litre, the market is proving more resilient than the headlines suggest. Q1 2026 delivered 614,854 registrations, up 5.9% year on year. March alone saw 380,627 new cars, the strongest March since 2019, with SMMT forecasting 2.05 million registrations for the full year. And 91% of car buyers say they are as confident or more confident in their ability to afford their next vehicle.