Ivor Cummins and Nadia Adan Expose Ireland’s Electric Car Crisis | Ep #52
In this episode of Counterpoint, we switch gear to look at the future of motoring. This is set against the huge reduction set by the Department of Finance to reduce miles traveled by a fifth in the next 5 years and to a half over the next 25 years. I’m Eddie Hobbs. Let’s break it down. Well, first we’re going to go to engineer, chartered engineer Ivor Cumins, who’s been looking at electric cars. And afterwards, I’m going to go to a remarkable entrepreneur, Nadia Adan, founder of Asheford Motors, to learn about all of the moving parts of the modern car retail business at her super new showroom in Asheford County, Wikllo. Ivor. So, can I just you’ve been you you you’ve become the the kind of unofficial data data doctor for Counterpoint. It doesn’t come with any payments, I but I just want to thank you for for jumping in again and you’ve been looking at the background here. I’ve asked you just to look we now we just want to spend a bit of time talking about about the whole green agenda because you know we we we dealt with it with the with the department of finance future 40 report quite recently in another episode. I just wanted to ask you what is going on in that area? What what what have you discovered? Yeah. Well, it’ll be a reassurance to your viewers, Eddie. I did chartered engineering in 2015 and I came in the top six of 500 approximate applicants. Uh for good reasons, I think without being too smart about it. So, yeah, data is my thing. So, I looked today for a couple of hours into the data around this. I had some broad ideas. Uh but I uh I was interested in what I found out. So the first thing we might go to slide one is the market. Yeah. And I’d heard anecdotally the market was not great. And sure enough early in 2025 there were a lot of articles came out. You can see them on the screen. The top four articles there and they’re all acknowledging that Houston we have a problem with electric vehicle sales primarily the battery electric vehicles you know the pure electrics. And then interestingly I used chatebt and it came across as extremely biased pro EVs and you’ll see down the bottom of that slide one that it was referring to well actually things are getting great in 2025 but as usual when you dig in twothirds of the sales uh that they refer to in the Reuters article bottom center are in China which in fairness is a separate issue and another big chunk of are Americans were running out of the subsidies and the huge subsidy deals that they were getting. So there was a surge in purchases based on the subsidies running out. So always when you dig, you find out things are not quite what the AI tells you. H but slide two then is the really interesting one. So I’ve skipped a slide where there’s loads of articles showing 26% 35% down. plenty of articles out there on that, but this guy Jeff Buys Cars, someone tipped me off this afternoon to look at his video and it’s fascinating. Now, Jeff Buys Cars was very good during the COVID period on on all of that madness. So he’s kind of a questioner. But if you look at slide two, you’ll see that the figures there on the top right when you go from 20 to 21, which is slightly out of view, and then you see the numbers from around 150,000 up to around 240, right? That’s a good increase. And then from 22 to 23, you’ve jumped up to 301,000. You know, very nice. And then from 23 to 24 we have 331,000 approximately. So again increasing but then from 24 to 25 the leftmost column we see we’re down to around 106,000 to date. And those figures may be a little behind. You know the data isn’t fully in yet. So the blue square below we see the 2025 total that Jeff has kind of estimated and it’s around 140 something,000. So way way lower than the previous period which tallies with all of the other reports I have I’m not showing here. So definitely people are shrinking back from the pure electric vehicles. Uh but we’ll have to wait and see how that progresses in the coming year or two. And then when you you when when when you’re looking at the actual performance then of of of you know the conventional cars and the hybrids and the and the EVs, what did you find? think because because you told me off camera you you had a s you had a surprising find which I think is great. Yeah. So slide three I’ve put everything together this afternoon on a single sheet and I’ll just run through it. The finding I had was that hybrids and also the plug-in hybrids impressed me more than I expected. So as you know Eddie I’m unbiased. I just look at the data. That’s what I do. And the hybrids look even better than they thought they were. So from the top, you’ve got the CO2 that is released during the manufacturer of the car. Now an internal combustion engine IC traditional on the left column, there’s around six tons of CO2 in its manufacturer. The EVs, the pure electric vehicles, BEVs, battery electric vehicles, there’s around 12 tons of CO2. Uhoh, an extra six tons. And that’s because of the intensity of the batteries and other aspects of them. And then the hybrids are pretty much a true hybrid is around the same as a standard car. And the plug-in hybrids have bigger batteries. So they’re 7.5 tons instead of six. But the message from the CO2 used in the manufacturer is that the EVs start off really, really bad and they’re going to take some number of years before they even begin to break even. Now, if we go to the next line on the slide, for 200,000 miles, the CO2 released in a traditional car supposedly is 32 tons. And in an EV electric, if you’re using traditional fuels to generate your electricity or more coal centric or oil centric, the EV releases 27 tons in that lifetime. And if you’re using western with a lot of green energy, apparently uh chat GPT claims it’s more like 15 tons. And then when we go to the hybrids, uh they’re pretty good, but the third line is the total CO2 over the life of the vehicle. A traditional 38 tons. Uh an EV electric vehicle could be as high as 39 tons, right? if you’re using fossil fuels to generate your electricity and it could be as low as 27 tons. But the hybrids are the winners. I put them in green. Around 29 tons total and as low as 23.5 tons for the plug-in hybrids. Now, you’ll see a figure 35.5 tons. That looks pretty high. That’s if you don’t use the plug-in hybrid correctly. And if you don’t use the electrical plugin for the hybrid, in fairness, they’ve got all the battery weight and you’re not using any of the electrical advantage. So, I’d stick with the EV plug-in hybrid used correctly. And then the hybrids sweep home. That’s if you believe CO2 is a problem and not a a plant food crucial for all life on this planet, which I’d be more like. Yeah. Uh but even if you believe in the CO2, the hybrids romp home. So So what we’re So what we’re what we’re witnessing so is political, right? Absolutely political. And we’ll go through the rest of the sheet and you’ll see that it’s political. Uh there’s a a point on ideology for autonomy. I show that the traditional engine uh gives you total autonomy and you’re outside of the control system of being plugged into the machine obviously and EV electric pure electric are a disaster given the concerns we have with where the autocratic world is going. You are locked in to the electrical system. I’ll just give one example. So the Ukraine war, the price of gas went up around 3x and the price uh or well yeah it flew up just for a few weeks and the electricity prices everyone should remember shot up. But then after a couple of weeks the price of gas came right back and now it’s at all-time lows but the electricity cost didn’t come back. It’s still double what we had before or close to it. So the problem is if you are locked into the electrical grid system, the government, you are very very limited and you can get absolutely screwed with electricity costs. Whereas the open market how does that feed then through to say comparisons of an EV versus a hybrid or or a conventional car and a long on a long journey. Has has it has it has it moved around the the cost per mile? Yeah. Well, the long journey uh the traditional and the hybrids rump home again. I mean, this Eddie is a route. I love putting this sheet together. So, if we look at it again briefly, uh just for people to zone in, we’ve got the distance or the range. So, around 450 miles for a traditional car. Uh on the right, we’ve got the hybrids who are actually a little longer because they’ve got an advantage of using good technology and efficiency. So, they’re actually even better in range. And if the batteries go kaput, uh, you’ve still got all the autonomy and most of the range. But look at the EV. You’re talking a couple of hundred miles, a huge reduction in range. And people need to understand, it’s not like they have a massively lower range, but you just stop off at the gas station. No, you’ve got to do a full charging cycle at the end of that short range before you’re on your way. Another thing that jumps out, I’m just looking at the tape for the first time there is is the weight of the EVs are considerably heavier than uh I mean because that has to be carried as well by the energy in it. Uh that’s that’s quite extraordinary, isn’t it? I was impressed in a bad way. I knew there was a weight problem but looking at the sheet there you’ll see by the numbers it’s always about the numbers. Uh we’ve got around 1,00 kilograms from Chat GPT for a medium or smallish car, 1,650 for the electrical version. That’s an extra half metric ton that you’re carrying everywhere. And then the hybrids, they’re pretty damn good. You got a little extra for the true hybrid and then for the plug-in hybrid, yeah, you’ve got bigish batteries, but it’s still only 1,300 kg. And that brings you on to another thing, tire wear. So basically rough calculations from chat GPT, you’ve got an extra 25% approximately of tire wear and that could be around 15 or 1,600 euro over the life of the vehicle of extra rubber hitting the road, right? So you got to add that in too. So I mean, well, well, that’s the good news that you’re going to be getting uh some kind of a hybrid vehicle next. And uh you may be getting it from uh from my guest in studio Nadia Adan. So Nadia very welcome to studio. I’m going to take a short break here now. I just want to introduce you to the audience because I’m really looking forward to this discussion. Ivor, I want to thank you again for for doing all that. That’s excellent analysis. That’s fascinating stuff. I know there’s been a lot of people out there going to be glued. They’ll be they’ll be they’ll be playing this back a few times to make sure that they that they catch up with you. So thanks for that’s very very valuable. I thank you so much for that. Thank you Eddie. And again, the figures are approximate, but you know, it’ll be interesting to see how the electric vehicle ideological loons fight back on this one. Well, we’re all going to be looking forward to seeing you, you know, what you’re going to be driving next. Um, you know, on on foot of this analysis. So, I thanks very much for that. So, come stay with us. We’ll be just back after the break. We’ll be talking to Nadia Adan about everything to do with the moving parts of the car retail business. It’s time to pivot to solutions. We know the problems and the challenges. This coming January the 10th and 11th, I’m hosting the first ever IRL forum, a solutions-driven national public conference with special guests speaking on issues Ireland faces today. Hence, this is the beginning of a comprehensive new discussion about what to do. Visit IRLforum.com now for limited tickets with 20% off for early birds using my promo code Eddie. See you there. So Ny, you’re very welcome to Counterpoint. I’m so looking forward to this discussion because you’re the first theme owner that I’ve had into the studio and it’s something I want to do much much more of to go down into uh into businesses and personalities and how it all happens because it’s a mystery to a lot of people who’ve never been involved in anme and uh and and it’s particularly challenging formemes in Ireland anyway you know because of the big focus on foreign direct investment and so on but we won’t get into the macro stuff right uh what what I find fascinating about your story um and we’ve only just met uh is that you you started off and you uh you you you did a degree in financial services and you went on you did a postgrad in Trinity and then you did a stock broking exam. Yeah. I know you’re selling cars and you have your own showroom in Asheville. Can you just what was the moment when you pivoted from from one to the other? No, I can see that how it would transfer all that knowledge would transfer into the mechanics, but I mean what happened? Yeah, absolutely. And I suppose in one way it’s kind of helped me now figure out how the kind of the market’s going within cars. And that kind of led to my decision to stop selling EVs about two years ago when I saw what was happening in the secondhand car market. And I can get to that shortly. But basically the the I suppose the catalyst what happened for me was it was before the pandemic and I was working in my stock broker job and I really wasn’t happy with what I was doing but I was so heavily I suppose pushed into that field with my academia uh with my work and I I I really didn’t know how to get out of it. But at the time I remember I was working with all these traders and they’re on loads of money and I’d gotten my big first loan and I bought my first car which was a 08 BMW 320 diesel coupe white manual M Sport. I absolutely loved it. I f felt like I fit in with the guys in the Shark Tank and I I enjoyed it. I went to sell it. I went to a main dealer. I didn’t get the price I wanted. I stuck it up and done deal at the time and I actually sold it. I met someone in Tesco on my lunch break and I made a few quid and I got such a buzz out of it. And it’s actually quite similar when I was buying and selling stocks. It’s same thing buying and selling cars. You know, you buy low and you sell high. And I suppose the fundamentals and the variables are are a little bit different. And it was a lot I had to learn. Um, and I learned through my mistakes, but I also had a lot of help around me. So, when I I just decided I quit my job before the pandemic. I’d saved up enough money to lease a yard for a year 2019. It was just before 20. It was literally 3 months, January 2020, and the pandemic started in March 2020. And I took I’d saved enough for a year’s lease. I had a couple of cars I started off with. I had a loan and I just said, “Right, I’m going to go for it.” Because I just really enjoyed the crack. Um, and then that was it. And then when the pandemic happened that kind of made me have to pivot to social media and then it became this huge thing like a girl selling cars in Wikllo. Um and I and I started there and I just built the business. Um and now I’m lucky enough fortunate that I was able to buy a showroom. Well, it was actually a site last year and I built a showroom and we’re well known now and yeah I I actually and you incorporated as well last year around the same time. I was sold trader for the first few years because you kind of don’t know if it’s going to work out and you sort of just build build and then you realize, oh crap, my tax bill is going to be huge. Well, but but it’s a remarkable takeoff. I mean, especially that that you did it during the pandemic. It’s an extraordinary story. Yeah. And but what size is the showroom and uh you know, compared to where you started, how many cars now would you have in stock? Oh, wow. So, like the show So, I I’m at about 35 cars at the moment. um with a growth plan with the banks and everything to grow that to about 60 cars. Um the showroom itself isn’t huge because it’s kind of like a custom showroom. It can fit one car and the office and everything like that and have space for the kitchen and all that. So we have an outside uh you know cars are parked outside and then we have one nice car parked inside. At the moment it’s a Ferrari 4. I was about to say what’s parked in there. Ferrari. Red big red Ferrari. You got the keys of you. Oh do. Yeah. I’ll sign you up for the finance right now. So yeah, so basically that that’s what it is. And with the with I suppose the idea then to go from the 35 to the 60. But for me really um Eddie and I suppose this is where the finance comes in. I’m a margin business. I’m not a volume business and I keep my overheads quite low. I own the site. I just have my mortgage and my biggest expense is just the small team I have. So if I can be quite agile with the market, if I have to skip to kind of cheaper cars, I’ll sell cheaper cars. And again, I’m not biased. I look at my bank balance and I’m an independent dealer. I don’t have a family behind me who are in the motor trade for 20 years. I come from a completely different background. Most dealers will be in the it’ll be in the I can ask you about that background because I think that’s another part of your remarkable story. So you you you’ve your your your Somalian ethnicity, isn’t it? Your your mom is she she was born there. Yes. And you you moved to Ireland when you what age were you? Yeah. So I was about four or five. It was the early ‘9s. It was just after the war war happened in in the early 90s, but we actually had a bit of a journey before we got to Ireland. So, you know, we had been trafficked. We went through different countries in Africa, Sudan. We were there for a while. And then we went through Libya, the Sahara Desert. We ended up, you know, going through the ocean, ended up in the UK, and then to Ireland. So, it was like a while before we got here. I was quite young. I don’t remember a whole lot, but when I talked to my mom, you know, she tells me bits and pieces. Your mom must be a remarkable woman. She is. Yeah. She has her own issues, I suppose, and she h, you know, would have PTSD in some ways of her life, but she’s a fighter. Like, I’ve never met someone who just survives whatever environment you end up into. And I have to say, when we landed in Ireland in the early ‘9s, we landed in Okonnell Street. It was just me and my mom. We had nothing. And she tells me of a story of somebody giving her £100 and it was pounds back then. And that’s the type of people the Irish people are. They were so kind to us. And I suppose back then things moved quicker. So you could be processed quicker, you could come out and integrate. Mom could work, I could go to school and and those were the things that really helped and shaped me to be who I am today. Yeah. Wow. Well, that’s well thanks for telling that for sharing that story because it’s something people need to hear, you know. Yeah, I think so. Yeah. And can I just go back to the mechanics of the business? Yes. So you don’t you don’t have to reveal this the the the secret sauce, right? But what in in prep in preparing for this, I was looking at how car retail businesses operate in terms of their their streams of of revenue. And one of the things that jumped out at me was that car finance commissions are are quite significant. But then you’ve regulation by the central bank because I remember when that was announced, I said, “My god,” I said, “This is going to be fun.” The uh the sort of the uh the sort of the the desk driven nerds of the central bank with all of their rules meeting the car sales business. I said, “I’d love to be at some of those meetings.” So, how has all that worked out? Yeah, so far so good. And now, again, with my sort of business, we do do a lot of finance, but a lot of the time because they’re higherend cars, a lot of people would have tradeins and they might not need the finance. So, again, I I don’t really depend. The commission is great to get and no problem saying it. I get 2%. But it’s not the end all be all for me. I already make my money in my margin on my cars. Um, they I think so your main margin and your gross profit margin. So it’s what you buy and sell for just like for example and again I deal in the higher end stuff right so some people might say oh that’s a big profit but you imagine covering when you say higher end now for those listening what what does that mean mid to high end so anywhere from 60 grand to 300 grand so what kind of car so Porsche Bentley Lamborghinis now I do have a lot of mid-end which is your Mercedes your BMW Audi I do very well with Jeeps so like GLE’s Q7s uh X5s I love SCOD H you know I you nice go to there like loves go as well. They’re a great brand. So, but again, you know, like I started out quite low and I built myself kind of to the more of a margin business so I would have more of a buffer that I’d only need to sell one car a month to keep the doors open rather than be a big volume business that’s always and had you intended to do that from the start like was that the plan or did it just evolve? it it kind of just evolved naturally as I learned more and I realized like I didn’t want stress and the thing with higher volume cars and older cars and secondhand cars is that they give issues right so I wanted to keep the warranty costs down and I found if I stuck to like the higherend stuff yes if you got hit it would be quite bad because they’re more expensive same with the EVs they would be quite costly depending on say a Porsche tan battery or a Tesla battery they can be anywhere from like 5 to 20 grand there huge costs um And again, I’ll get into the EVs, but for for me, you know, secondhand EVs 10 years on, it’s a risky business versus traditional cars, ICE cars that have been around so long and those parts are around so long and skill labor is there so long. Uh, technology is constantly moving with the EVs. So, I hate to make this comparison, but think about, you know, your iPhone. My iPhone, I paid maybe 1,600 quid for it a year and a half ago. Now, it’s worth 600 quid. if that became an issue, I wouldn’t bother repairing it because that car wouldn’t be worth and that’s kind of what we’re seeing in the EV world. Um, the other side of it is sustainability. You know, in my eyes, a sustainable car is a car that does 20 years of service. And this all comes back down to cost of repairs that, you know, a diesel car, an ice car, you can get if it’s maintained properly, you can get 10, 20, 30 years. I have cars there with 500,000 km on it, Land Cruisers, diesels, that type of thing. And the longer they are on the road, the more miles they’ve done, the more sustainable they become. Whereas the EVs, because the technology is moving so quickly, they become obsolete. No one’s going to bother to fix a 10-year-old EV when the cost become so high because the value is not there. And it’s all well and good with the new entry, you know, the new entries buying these brand new EVs or the motor journalist saying, “Aren’t they great?” They’re driving them for a week brand new. And but when it comes to secondhand market when I have to deal with them and deal with the residual values, deal with th those kind of risks and also having to look my customers in the face that have lost serious money and we’ve seen it happen, you know, in the UK then we saw it happen here. Um it’s just very difficult for me to do that. And what you I I spotted you nod nodding way out of the corner of my eye when when I was going through um his his surprise find of the plug-in hybrids and the hybrid cars. Are you seeing that growth coming through or is it is it more is it more based on just spreadsheet modeling that he’s been doing? No, absolutely. What he was saying was translation translating to what I see every day. So, I was happy about that, you know, um because you do question yourself and absolutely I think more people are happy to explore the world of P plug-in hybrid because full-on EV is just that’s still a little bit we’re not there. So, look, I can name all the things. We’ve got infrastructure issues, you know, and even when you delve into that, you’ve got if you live in an apartment, you can’t have a home charger. So, you have to be living in a house. I always said, listen, if it worked for you and you you had the solar panel, you lived in a house, you had the charger there, your commute, or maybe as a second car, fantastic. But for the general public, we’re just not there yet. You’ve also got an issue of skilled labor. Um, range anxiety is still a thing. Um, and also like, you know, grants is is a big thing as well. And what we’re seeing is now if we start to see that sales are following tax incentives then it’s an artificial market. And what I mean by that that you know every time you go and buy brand new EV there’s always a great incentive. It’s 0% finance you get a free holiday. You know that saying beware of the Greeks bearing gifts and this is exactly what’s happening. But people are forgetting what is happening 10 years down the line when there’s a 10-year-old EV that may have issues and it’s too costly to put back on the road. How is that sustainable? Yeah. You you you’ll have two types of range anxieties then you know you you’ll have the range anxiety of the car and the range anxiety of going to the loop and I’d be looking at my bank account and now yeah exactly so um and then what the other thing I wanted to get a little bit into is that that we’re now beginning to see you know the plan from the department of finance well they say it’s a model but it’s actually their plan uh and and it’s saying you know there’s going to be a reduction in car travel over the next 5 years of 20%. In other words, they want us to drive 20% less miles and um and then and then uh by by kind of 20, you know, you know, we’ll be then on the road to driving 60% less miles in 25 years. Now, I don’t think any of this is going to happen, by the way, just just to be clear, but I just find it very interesting that um because it it shows you how the incentives are structured to follow this crazy idea. Uh I’m not suggest you you may have different views to my own. Um but it just seems nuts to me um because because when you look at it and I just ran some numbers. I just wanted to have a look at well if that was the case how would they do it and they they’d switch from you know motor tax uh to uh to to basically a cost per kilometer and would be done by satellites linking to the cars to calculate how far you drove and at the moment in order to just replace all the revenues coming from the motor tax it would it would work out at at about 11 cent per kilometer. So if you drove from Dublin to Cork and back it would cost around um uh sorry one way I think it would cost around 53 right but like on the basis of getting a 50% reduction um you know based on the engine I was looking at they were calculating like you you’d be well over €100 in in in literally car car travel tax kilometer you know be kilometer charge and um I just find that very interesting because um this whole idea of satellite tracking is linked into tracking us in a lot of other things that we’re doing as well and a lot of the cars I’m told a lot of the modern cars have have built-in monitors. They have they have ways of being tracked that are just haven’t been turned on yet. Were you aware of that? Yeah. No. And and and even like the technology in the new cars and in the EVs are amazing. And even you’ve got the likes of self-driving that’s going to be down the road. And even what the government had talked about before the budget was weight class uh tax as well. So they were going to put a tax on SUVs. And as I um sorry, Ivor mentioned is that the EVs weigh more than the diesel cars, right? So like the EVs were going to be even taxed as well. And I just think as motorists, we are the lowhanging fruits that we they always go to first. Of course, we want to be sustainable, but just because it’s we’re saying something on paper, it doesn’t mean it’s naturally going to transfer into day-to-day living and and how we are all living in Ireland. Like you know, we’ve huge infrastructure problems. Like I was on the M50 coming up to you tonight from Wikllo and it was two and a half hours um stuck in traffic, you know. So that’s the reality of people’s lives. And if you are constantly taxing the likes of couples and young families and Mary and Joe down in Cork who just need to get to work, they’re going to keep bearing that cost and that’s just going to be a huge financial strain on their life. Um so I think they just need to kind of look at how they’re doing things and and implement it in different ways. Um, you know, we’re looking at worldwide all consumer demand of EVs have has actually reduced. The forecasts have reduced. A lot of manufacturers have turned around now and say this 2030 has gone out the window. We’re going to keep producing. Well, the United States have left left the building. Correct. Yeah. And the legacy main dealers, so Ford, Volvo, GM, Porsche, they’ve all said we’re going to keep making ice cars till 2030. Uh, which for me is good news. I know I shouldn’t say it, but I love the sound of petrol and I love sound of a big engine. Um when I was look when I was looking at the change there some years ago a few short years ago it see it seemed to me that the that that some of these diesel modern diesel engines I I was amazed at at the such a low emission you know that they that they’ve really done a lot of work on um on on cleaning up the conventional engines haven’t they absolutely and also looking forward there is lots of options so Porsche are working on e- fuel as well which is a synthetic fuel um that’s a massive raver apparently and also the likes of hydrogen and bofuel and also let’s look at these big commercial trucks that are on the road like they’re not going to be run by electricity. So there has to be another way to look at it and that is a combination in my eyes of hybrid bofuel e e- fuel. Unfortunately the hydrogen is very expensive to create at the moment and maintain but they are looking at ways of of making that well I I drove around about 15 years ago of 10 12 to 15 years ago. I drove around for several months in um in a car that just purely on water. We had um yeah we we managed to get the the the the hydrogen uh coming out of the out of the water with the electrodes and then it fed directly into the combustion chamber. Now the car loved it but of course couldn’t continue to drive like that obviously probably insured when that was happening. But I just I just think I just I just think it’s it’s very very interesting to see the of course the EVs really you know you know consumer there’s been a consumer response now to the EV experiment. It’s not good for it. But it’s fantastic to hear that the that the hybrids uh are are are so are so good, isn’t it? Yeah, it is. And they kind of bridge that gap. So, if you’re not really sure like you want an EV, but you kind of want to be more sustainable and greener, the plug-in hybrids are great and I sell a lot of them. And actually, they’re cheaper on the VRT. So, for example, a fresh sport Range Rover Sport or Fresh Hybrid X5, the VRT is about €8,000 to€10,000, but if you’re bringing in a diesel X5, it’s 40,000. Yes. So, we are like this is another thing I heavily advocate for is VRT. That’s your V vehicle registration tax. Um, and we are getting hammered on the diesels, but there’s a huge demand for diesels and petrols, just people can’t afford it. So, they’re getting priced. So, even though the numbers are shown in Ireland, you know, apparently we’re up every quarter. We must be in our own little ecosystem here because the rest of the world isn’t shown thing. Now, look, this might be a little bit conspiracist. I know you like your conspiracy theories, but you know, some people say it’s a lot of pre-reging, which basically means, you know, vorting the cars, which then pre-reges them, which acts as a sale. And obviously there’s incentives there for BIK H for fleet companies and stuff like that. That’s fine. Um, and also there’s there’s taxi grants. So, you know, is that being sucked up by all of that? And also, they’re on a very low base now, so they are cheap for some people. I don’t know. It’s hard to tell. Trigand says, I was I was I was talking to a friend of mine. He’s retired now. I was a senior partner in a major accountancy firm in in Britain. He’s Englishman and um I won’t hold that against Yeah. No, no, no. And very very smart man. Yeah. And uh and I I was there was there was an EV in his drive and I said, “Where the hell where did that come from?” And he said, “Well, you should never believe it.” But I got a phone call from the manufacturer, I won’t say it was, uh to come in because he’d been buying their products for quite a while, you know, himself and his family. And uh they wanted they were they were giving the EVs away at I think 60% reduction or 50% reduction just to get the stock out the door. Yeah. But but it was all there was almost a kind of a a document you had to sign. So you’re not allowed to tell tell anybody. You’re not allowed to tell anyone. Actually have another better one for you. And this happened a few times. So to buy like the brand new 911s or the GT3s from port, you had to buy a take on an off them first to be on put on certain lists. So there you go. if it was such a great product, it would sell itself. It’s very simple. And then, you know what’s interesting as well in your you obviously built the right the right mix that you you’ve hit the premium end of the market and of course you’re in Ashford and you know you’re hitting that whole southeast Dublin. You you wouldn’t be doing it in Lumman. Well, you have Greystones down the road. We sell a lot of jeeps and stuff. A lot of horsey load a lot of jeeps to horsey people and things like that. And yeah, look what’s your biggest seller? Uh, do you know what the biggest seller if like I suppose from an SUV point of view X5s are very popular, GLE’s, um, Scodas as well. I really rave about Scoda because I think they’ve really come into a really good price point for families and compared to what Volkswagen used to be. Like VW used to be the people’s car, but Scod have really taken that and they’re at a better price point. Um, I’m not affiliated or anything like that. I just I am an independent. I just think they’re a great price point for people. Um, so those are kind. And then if we’re looking at saloons, then you’re talking your BMWs, your Audi, your Audi’s, A6s, BMW 520s. Um, and what do you do with the tradeins then? Do you just send them into the trade or do you try to turn them around? Because they’re so fresh. Like years ago, I’d be selling everything just to get the money in. But now, because we’re at a really good standard of like customer service now, and I’m very well known, again, I don’t like stress, so I try and just make the right decision. So, I try to sell very fresh that they’re still under manufacturer warranty. So I don’t take anything unless it’s 2020 plus and then but then there’s some sports cars that you know if they’re low mileage and maintained they won’t really give issues like you kind of just learn what to take your hit on. Now of course you still have your costs but um to to answer your question um yeah it’s just look you you just do what you what you can and do do you club together at all? I mean I mean I mean I don’t mean in in terms of antitrust stuff but I mean do do you get together at all with other with other car retailers and sit down and talk about the market and what your concerns are what the opportunities are. Does that happen in your business? It does. So I’m affiliated with SIMI which is society independent motor industry. Um and basically yeah there you know you can I can go to the committees and there is an independent committee there for the independent retailers and I think lately we’re actually getting a little bit more like outspoken about certain things you know the secondhand EV market VR costs costs in general for for us to try and run our businesses like again we don’t have big main dealers a lot of the time it’s our name and our bank accounts that we’re just operating with plus the bank or whatever but that’s the whole point we are so different to how main dealers operate. Um, and you do you have one bank or do you have a number of banks? I have one bank. One bank. Okay. Yeah, I deal with one bank and they’ve been very good to me to be fair in the last couple of years because they they you know in your first few year business you’re knocking on everyone’s door and getting nowhere and then you get to a point and they’re knocking on your door which is kind of nice for a change. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean it’s a well, it’s a sign of change obviously, but I mean we’ve we have a big job of work to do in Ireland to try and get more more state concentration on building our own entrepreneurs and that’s why that’s why I find your story uh uplifting. Yeah. You know, and uh and it’s great for you to come and share it with with the counterpoint audience so that people can actually see you know this is a story of of a person who’s who’s come from I say bored out of your mind inside stop broking right out into the out into the real world. just got in at the wrong time though, right? Cars. Yeah. So, listen, I wish you well with that. And if people want to contact Ashford Motors, how do they do that? Yeah. So, you can find us, our website is ashford motors.ie where you can see all our stock, you can contact me directly or really social media is where people reach out now. Uh we’ve nearly half a million followers across all our social media. So, Instagram, Ashford Motors, Tik Tok. So, look, just Google Ashford Motors, you see me all over the shop. Yeah. And just just just for viewers, there there’s no counterpoint discount. H you you’ll get you’ll get a good deal. We’ll have to give you a promo code Eddie for the for the customers. I do have a good discount for the guards, so I’m sure I can I can get one for you as well. Okay. They like the fast cars as well, of course. They do. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They they um they’re amazing drivers actually. Those those that have done the courses, they’re extraordinary. Anyway, listen, thank you so much, Nadia. It’s it’s been delightful to talk to you and um I wish you well obviously in in the years to come as you maneuver your way through all of this all of this green agenda which hopefully will start fading fading into the past because with the United States pulling out and China doing its own thing and India doing its own thing um Western Europe seems to be the only region in the world that’s that’s taking all this uh as as a gospel you know that has to be followed so anyway look I’m going to leave it at that Nadia thank you so much h you know what to do Uh if you like this, just hit the two big buttons, like and subscribe. And uh if you like this content and and you want and you and you want me to talk to more small business owners and bring bring them into studio and have this type of discussion, please do let me know uh in in the comments underneath the uh underneath the episodes as they come online. So So thank you and see you next time.
Chartered Engineer Ivor Cummins and car dealership owner Nadia Adan join Eddie Hobbs to examine the future of motoring against the backdrop of Ireland’s Department of Finance plans to reduce miles traveled by 20% in five years and 50% over 25 years.
Expect to learn about the declining global sales of pure electric vehicles, surprising data showing hybrid and plug-in hybrid vehicles outperforming both traditional combustion engines and EVs in total lifetime CO2 emissions, the significant weight difference between EVs and conventional cars, and the practical implications for tire wear and range. The discussion also covers the challenges facing the secondhand EV market, including battery replacement costs and residual values.
Nadia Adan shares her journey from financial services to founding Ashford Motors, her experience as an independent dealer focusing on mid to high-end vehicles, and her decision to stop selling EVs based on secondhand market concerns. She offers insights into the car retail business model, financing structures, and the practical realities of Ireland’s infrastructure limitations for electric vehicles.
This comprehensive examination of current automotive trends reveals how political decisions are shaping consumer choices, while highlighting the potential of alternative technologies like synthetic fuels, biofuels and hydrogen.
For more visit https://www.eddiehobbs.com
© 2025 1215 Counterpoint Productions Limited. All rights reserved.
