Mark Willmett, sales director for Derek Warwick Honda, said the Island appeared to be in a ‘bubble’ and defying a sales slump reported in the UK.
At the same time, an all-electric vehicle dealership in St Peter says it is fighting to keep up with demand – with some vehicles being sold before they are advertised.
The same cannot be said of many traders in the UK, which last month endured its worst September since 1999. According to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, a total of 2.31 million vehicles were sold in the UK last year, whereas only 1.24 million were sold between January and September this year.
Mr Willmett said: ‘We have been particularly lucky. It seems that we are in something of a Jersey bubble at the moment. In the 26 years that I have been in the industry, I have never been as busy as I have been during the past few months.’
He added: ‘Jersey people tend to spend quite a bit on their holidays – they go on cruises and to places like Australia and Dubai. Because they have not been able to go away they have been spending their money on other things.’
Mr Willmett’s comments come after it was reported that Jersey’s property market was ‘going bananas’, with one mortgage provider receiving the highest number of daily requests for financing in its 30 years of trading.
Elsewhere, Morton Alexandersson, managing director of EVSales, said he was also fighting to keep up with demand.
‘The new [electric] cars being sold now have a 200- to 300-mile range so they can deal with the motorways in the UK, but the first-generation cars which began to be sold about ten years or so ago, which have a range of about 80 miles, are perfect for Jersey and it means the Island can take advantage of the emerging second-hand market much earlier than the UK,’ he said.
‘We cannot bring them in fast enough and we are just having to get what we can from the UK. We are having situations arising quite often now where a customer is coming to us for a particular car that we have before we have even started advertising it.’
Kirsten Lenhardt, transaction manager for Freelance, said the company had now set up a dedicated electric vehicle showroom and had experienced a 10% to 20% increase in electric and hybrid vehicle sales this year compared to
2019.
‘On the Nissan van side it has been particularly busy and there has also been a lot of interest in our [Nissan] Leaf and other electric vehicles,’ she said.
‘We have now opened an all-electric showroom where we buy in other vehicles, such as the BMW i3 and VW e-Golf, which sell quite quickly. I would say there has been more of a shift from people moving from petrol or diesel to hybrid. Then those people who already have a hybrid are taking the leap to electric.’
According to DVS there are currently 560 electric cars, 139 electric light commercial vehicles and 68 electric motorcycles on the Island’s roads.
lFor more eco-car news, see page 32 in today’s Motoring section.
