Hyundai claimed its largest ever market share in the UK last year, at 5% – up 15.4% on 2021 – and placing it in the top 10 manufacturers by volume.
Here Hyundai UK managing director Ashley Andrew reflects on the underlying good news stories of those results, including burgeoning profits, booming demand for EVs, the growing potential of the N performance sub-brand and subscription models and why brilliant dealer performances mean he doesn’t see a need to rush into the agency retail model.
Your registrations in 2022 were 80,419, with a 5% market share setting a new record. You must be pleased?
“The overall volume and growth are really strong, but it’s the quality of the business which is the real story: 98% of that volume went through the retail network, with only 2% as rental buyback. That’s incredibly strong and especially beneficial for RVs [residual values]. What’s more, it wasn’t just last year that was strong: we come into this year with strong order banks too.”
How long are your waiting lists?
“It varies model to model, but around six months as an average. That’s healthy enough in the current market, but I’d rather work on three to four [months] as optimal, because ideally you want to give customers the product in a time that meets their expectations.
“That’s especially true in the EV sector. We have incredible demand for our Ioniq products, and we’d like get more supply. That’s where our largest order banks are, and I’d very much like to get them down to that three or four months.”
When will supply ease?
“It will be gradual throughout this year. I think it will be a much more ‘normal’ market, but with the caveat that as we move towards 2030, there will be sporadic shifts, especially as EV demand moves.”
The wider industry has seen a softening in demand for EVs as incentives have been removed, road tax has been talked about and electricity prices have soared. Haven’t you?
“No, certainly not yet. What we have is a strong order bank for Ioniq 5, with new orders still coming in, and the imminent launch of Ioniq 6, which has created a huge amount of interest. Then we revealed the next-generation Kona Electric last month, and that’s provoked a huge amount of interest, so it keeps on coming.”