VW e-Golf: EV values and demand lead independents to specialise

An increasing number of independent retailers are moving towards only selling EVs on their forecourts, according to Chargemaster’s director of communication and strategy, Tom Callow.

In a presentation at the AM Digitech conference earlier this year, Callow cited JD Cleve, Grimsby; Drive Green, Bristol; and EV Expert, Guildford among a list of emerging EV specialists.

He also challenges the perception of EV residual values (RVs) as being weaker than non-EVs.

Our e-Golf long-term test car has a three-year/60,000-mile RV of 31% – the same as its 150PS two-litre TDI alternative.

Cazana valued our test car at £30,026 retail, with an estimated 43 days to sale. An Auto Trader search returned 23 e-Golfs  such as ours (2017 or later). All had mileage under 10,000 and were priced above £26,990.

At time of writing, VW used car and aftersales operation, White Rose Petersfield, had five e-Golfs in stock. Sales manager Paul Rabbets said the cars were bought from VW Financial Services and were being used by sales executives ahead of a delivery of five new e-Golfs.

“There has been a lot of interest and we’ve delivered a number of test drives,” he said.

“Our prices are artificially high because we want to keep them for a while, but I’ve no doubt that they will sell quickly when we align the prices more closely to what they should be.”