TESLA ADDS £45K MODEL Y LONG RANGE

WE'RE USED TO hearing about the gloom in the car market, but the truth is that new car buyers are having a great time of it. Offers abound, on not only EVs but also hybrids, PHEVs and good old combustion-engined cars, mainly embedded in finance deals (where they have less effect on residual values).

- NICK GIBBS

Why? Two reasons. One is that car makers are anxious that sales volumes don't fall too low. After the pandemic, many of them exploited a shortage of new cars by focusing on higher-margin models, like bigger SUVs; some even believed they could continue this 'value-over-volume' strategy indefinitely. But once the supply chain was fixed, cash-strapped buyers gratefully went back to chasing deals.

Car makers that stayed aloof found their dwindling profits couldn't sustain a production network built for the previous dash for growth, so it was either jack up the marketing and incentives budget or simply accept they were going to be a smaller company in the future.