- VERTU LAUNCHES £10k AI CHALLENGE
- BORIS JOHNSON’S £1bn RAPID CHARGING FUND CANNED
- CITNOW LAUNCHES AUTO360 CRM BUILT ON SALESFORCE
- COX AUTOMOTIVE FORECASTS USED MARKET STABILITY
- AUTO TRADER ‘ROAD AHEAD’ INTERVIEW SERIES LAUNCHES WITH DUNCAN McPHEE
- WEEK AHEAD: Vertu AGM
- GOVERNMENT CONFIRMS EV COMPANY CAR TAX BREAKS TO CONTINUE
- GAP INSURANCE PAYOUTS TRIPLE IN 3 YEARS
- EU OEMS CALL FOR ‘E-CARS’ INSPIRED BY ‘KEI CARS’
- FORD HAS ALREADY TOPPED 2024 RECALL NUMBER
- OPINION: ZEV Mandate high-risk OEM options
Vertu launches £10k AI challenge
Vertu Motors has challenged its internal developer team to come up with new applications for AI within the business and has put up a £10,000 prize for the winner.
Vertu has 129 in-house developers and to win, the successful candidate, or team of candidates, must pitch their idea to a section of Vertu’s senior leadership team including CEO Robert Forrester and CTO Bruce Clark in a Dragon’s Den format.
Speaking to Auto Sunday, Clark said: “I’m very excited for what it’ll will bring. There should be some really great ideas. We’ve had six entries so far, one team and five individuals, and I think we could get one more team entry.”
The competition was launched in April and the deadline for entries is the end of June. The ‘Dragon’s Den’ event will happen on 1 August, where entrants will have to show how their AI idea will transform the business, the tools they’ll need, costs, resources, the benefits, return on investment and timeline.
While there will only be one £10k prize, Clark did not rule out the possibility of there being a second-place option if needed.
Boris Johnson’s £1bn Rapid Charging Fund canned
The government has ditched Boris Johnson’s £950m Rapid Charging Fund to roll out super-fast chargepoints on motorways due to a lack of interest from operators such as Moto, Welcome Break and Roadchef.
The scheme was unveiled in 2021 to install more than 6,000 super-fast chargepoints on English motorways by 2035. However, it failed to attract applications from service station operators. Complaints included the scheme being bogged down in bureaucracy, and being asked to commit to long-term power agreements that could lock in high costs.
Instead, ministers will focus on the £400m charging infrastructure scheme announced in the Comprehensive Spending Review. It has reportedly been designed to avoid the pitfalls of the Johnson scheme.
CitNOW launches Auto360 CRM built on Salesforce
CitNOW has launched its first CRM, called Auto360. It is built on Saleforce Automotive Cloud and will be available on Salesforce AppExchange.
Auto360 “seamlessly integrates multiple third-party dealer systems across marketing, sales and aftersales functions, building on the foundation of the established Feasa solution”.
The average retailer, CitNOW Group research found, has 50 third-party software systems. Nearly 9 in 10 retailers said the complexity of their tech stack creates a significant cost to their business.
“Several leading UK dealer groups are already realising measurable results from the CitNOW Auto360 solution,” said CitNOW Group CEO Boris Huard. “Early adopters have reported an average of 15% additional vehicle sales per month, a 25% increase in online service bookings, and a 30% uplift in tracked customer enquiries.”
Auto360 will roll out in a phased launch, starting with the Marketing360 module from late June. It will be followed by Showroom360 and Aftersales 360 in the second half of the year.
Cox Automotive forecasts used market stability
Cox Automotive is forecasting a steady performance for the used car market in 2025, Auto Sunday can exclusively reveal. There will be 7.64 million transactions, flat year-on-year but 3.6% above the long-term average from 2001-2019. It predicts an easing of supply constraints in the second half of the year.
Trade values are also set to stabilise, said insight director Philip Nothard. “Retailers have a clear opportunity to set robust retail prices, where market conditions support them, and maximise their margins.”
Auto Trader ‘Road Ahead’ interview series launches with Duncan McPhee
Auto Trader is launching a new monthly video interview series called Road Ahead. The 30-minute episodes will feature senior retailer, manufacturer and technology executives discussing what needs to be done to drive retail forward.
The first Road Ahead episode, hosted by Auto Trader commercial director Ian Plummer, features Hendy COO Duncan McPhee and launches at 10am on Wednesday 25 June. Industry professionals can register for the free conversations here.
WEEK AHEAD
Wednesday, Halfords full year
Wednesday, Vertu AGM
Friday, UK GDP
DATA INSIGHT
Government confirms EV company car tax breaks to continue
2030: Confirmed date that EV company car tax breaks will continue to, ministers announced this weekend. The discounted rates will rise to 9% from 2030, from 3% today.
GAP insurance payouts triple in 3 years £5,558: Average GAP insurance payout in 2024. It was just £1,587 in 2021. MotorEasy blames rising new car prices, spare parts shortages leading to more insurance write-offs, a surge in vehicle theft and steep EV depreciation.
GLOBAL AUTO
EU OEMs call for ‘e-cars’ inspired by ‘kei cars’
Stellantis and Renault are lobbying for a less regulated category of small cars with fewer safety features in Europe. It would be a European version of Japan’s ‘kei cars’ – which, Stellantis chairman John Elkann says, could be called ‘e-cars’.
European e-cars could help revive the small car segment which has largely been abandoned through being unprofitable. Japan’s kei cars account for 40% of the new car market.
Ford has already topped 2024 recall number
Six months into 2025, Ford has already issued more recalls than it did in the whole of 2024. Carscoops reports it has just issued its 81st recall, with the largest affecting 1.1m vehicles globally. It has averaged around 50k vehicles per recall this year.
Last year, Ford recalled 4.7m vehicles. With not even six months of 2025 complete, it has already recalled more than four million vehicles.
OPINION
ZEV Mandate high-risk OEM options
Imagine you’re a global OEM and you know it’s going to be beyond difficult to hit the UK’s ZEV Mandate targets, even though they’ve been recently revised; is there a way round the rules and a method to avoid the fines?
One, highly unlikely, option could be to sell as many cars as you can, of whatever fuel type you like (petrol, diesel, PHEV, BEV) and let consumer demand dictate what you deliver. You make money selling these cars but you’re not hitting your mandated target, so you’d have to borrow from future registrations which is fine in this far-fetched scenario, because you’re gambling on one of two options.
Option one. The government backtracks on the fines or the ZEV Mandate itself. In which case, you’ve sold cars profitably and you can keep selling cars in future.
Like I said, in the headline, this is a high risk scenario.
Option 2, the Government doesn’t perform a U-turn on electrification so you’ll be facing some massive fines for all that borrowing. So, in this (extreme) plan B you leave the UK and default on the fines.
It may sound like madness, but think about it for a minute. If you already know you’re likely to be quitting the UK, why not sell as many cars, of any fuel type, as profitably as possible until you leave?
After speaking to a couple of experts in this field, the UK government could enforce the fines with cooperation of other nations, but would they?
The one other thing to remember for a national sales company is not to have any legal presence in the UK after it quit the market. For instance you couldn’t quit cars but keep vans going (or bikes for that matter).
But if you left the UK and maintained a parts supply relationship through a third party, it may just work.
Tristan Young
Editorial Director
Get in touch: tristan@autosunday.co.uk
ISSN 2977-6597