The used-car trade was the part of the British motor industry most damaged by the electric transition, and it has been the slowest to forgive it. That is now changing measurably.

Startline Motor Finance's August Used Car Tracker finds that one in three secondhand dealers say they are worried about electrification. That is the lowest level of concern the tracker has recorded since October 2022 — close to four years.

Why dealers were worried in the first place

The scepticism was earned, not irrational. Used electric cars went through a severe residual-value collapse in the early 2020s, and dealers absorbed it directly. A trader who bought an electric car at auction and watched its trade value fall faster than they could retail it lost real money, repeatedly, in a way that combustion stock did not replicate.

Startline chief executive Paul Burgess put the shift plainly: "Dealer attitudes towards electric cars were understandably affected by the collapse in residual values seen a few years ago but increasingly, it appears that memory is fading and EVs are being seen as an opportunity rather than a problem."

Two things drove the recovery. Values found a floor once the initial oversupply of ex-lease stock cleared, and demand caught up as used electric cars reached prices where private buyers — rather than early adopters — would consider them. A dealer's confidence in a category is mostly a function of how quickly it turns and how predictable the margin is, and on both counts used EVs have become an ordinary product.

What dealers say they want

The tracker also asked what would help, and the answers are notable for being about purchase support rather than about the cars:

  • Half of dealers surveyed supported a used EV grant scheme.
  • Nearly two-thirds backed the concept of free or discounted home chargers as purchase incentives.

The home-charger answer is the more interesting one. Dealers are closest to the actual objection they hear across the desk, and it is not usually range — it is that a buyer without a driveway or a wallbox has no cheap way to charge, which turns a good used EV into an expensive one. Subsidising the charger rather than the car addresses the running-cost problem instead of the sticker price.

Startline did not publish a sample size for the August tracker, which is worth noting when reading the percentages.

The wider European context

This lands in a market where new electric sales are already at record levels — the UK hit a record EV share in July while still falling short of its ZEV mandate target. A functioning used market is what makes those new registrations sustainable: fleet and lease buyers price new cars off expected residual values, so a used trade that wants electric stock lowers the cost of every new electric car sold to a fleet.

Dealer sentiment is a soft indicator and a lagging one. But the direction matters more than the level here, because the used trade was the constituency with the strongest evidence for pessimism — and it is the one changing its mind.