UK automotive trends and insights: 2024
The UK automotive industry continues to evolve, shaped by changing consumer preferences, technological advancements, and market trends. Insights from YouGov's BrandIndex, Profiles, and surveys tools offer a comprehensive view of key shifts for 2024. From fuel choices to electric vehicle adoption and evolving automotive technology, these trends reveal what matters most to today’s car buyers and owners.
Electric Vehicles: Incentives and challenges
Amid headlines about stagnating sales for electric vehicles, YouGov Profiles data gave us a peek into the challenges that consumers face when thinking about purchasing the category of vehicles that have been marketed as part of the solution to bettering global environment. For a majority of Brits, initial upfront cost was a deterrent.
Price is an issue that budget EV makers, mainly from China, promise to tackle. But are Brits willing to consider purchasing from the likes of BYD? We also looked at the things that could incentivise EV adoption.
One can’t speak about EVs without mentioning Tesla, but our analysis revealed that things may not be looking so bright for the Elon Musk-owned brand.
Tech in cars
With the proliferation of Artificial Intelligence, it is no surprise that vehicle brands became increasingly likely to incorporate and emphasis the inclusion of automated and AI-powered features in their marketing.
We took a look at whether or not Brits want digital voice assistants in their vehicles and what applications of digital voice assistance would they find most useful in their vehicles. We also examined the automated features that car drivers in the UK are most likely to seek out.
There is also a demand for various health and well-being focussed features in cars. But, overall, which brands do consumers regard as being most innovative and tech forward.
Brand matters
As with majority of consumer categories, brand is key when it comes to determining car purchases. Three in five Britons rated brand reputation as an important factor when deciding on vehicle purchases. And YouGov BrandIndex allows us to closely examine the car brands on various key metrics, ranging from Value to Impression to Recommend, and much more.
We looked at the brands Brits are more likely to consider when buying either used or new vehicles within the next 12 months.
We also produced analysis looking more closely at brands like MG, Skoda and Jaguar.
The purchase journey – adverts, searches and purchase intention
Early in 2024, YouGov looked at the share of people in Britain and elsewhere who were planning to purchase cars in the next 12 months. And while, the online marketplace might be becoming the preferred choice for most other product categories, it’s not been smooth sailing for online vehicle retailers – well, certainly not for Cazoo. But which car brands were Britons searching for?
And were the brands being searched for influenced by the ads consumers were seeing?
Vehicle maintenance
How do Brits maintain their vehicles and which services do they value at car dealerships? This YouGov Profiles-based article looks at the maintenance tasks that Brits carry out on their own cars and how these can vary by age and the brand of vehicle owned. Regular maintenance and servicing is among the services that Brits would most value at car dealerships.
Image Credit: Kindel Media on Pexels