“The feedback we’ve had has been overwhelmingly positive, in terms of styling, specification, driveability, useability. But also, they’ve been quite surprised about the price tag, which is around the £40,000 mark. When we’ve asked the question without giving away the information as to the price, every single person has come up with a much higher list price than the one that we’ve put on the car.
“Clearly, there was motivation behind that. We targeted £40,000 to avoid premium car tax. That’s now gone up for EVs, but we felt it was still the right thing to do to hold the price at that sub-£40,000, for the Takumi model.”
Despite the positive introduction, the fact remains that the fleet market is not as saloon-centric as it once was. Mazda has therefore announced the CX-6e, an electric SUV that should arrive in the UK by the end of 2026.
While fleets are yet to see it, the team at Mazda has been impressed by the car so far.
Tomlinson explains: “It’s a bit early to say. The car isn’t likely to appear in the UK for six months or so. We haven’t been able to showcase the car to customers or leasing companies.
“I’m sure that the feedback will be equally as positive about that car as it was about the 6e. We’ve had a technical car over here for evaluation for a couple of weeks, and we have all been blown away by it. It has been in our car park, uncovered occasionally, and then when people see it, they tend to stop and look at it. I’m expecting good things.”
Keeping options open
The pair of EV launches do not mean that Mazda has gone all-in on electric, though. It still offers a diesel option in its larger SUVs, as well as plug-in and mild hybrid options across the range.
Its cautious approach is most evident in the launch of the third-generation CX-5, its best-selling model, which is only available with a mild-hybrid petrol engine. While the ICE-only CX-5 has a BiK rate of 37%, making it unattractive to many company car drivers, Tomlinson believes that it will find its place in the fleet market.
He says: “I don’t anticipate company car drivers who pay company car tax flooding into CX-5, because it’s an internal combustion car with CO2 emissions, but we’ve always done incredibly well in the personal contract hire space with CX-5. I expect that to continue with the new car as well.
“Whilst it isn’t a company car, it is a fleet registration, or a fleet-funded vehicle. We expect the car to be as equally popular as the previous CX-5, which finished in Q1 this year.
“We’re fortunate in that we’ve had such a small gap between the two. In Europe, they’ve been without the outgoing car for 12 months or so now.”
Mazda still sees the value in offering customers a choice, even in the fleet market, where there are continued incentives for going electric.
Tomlinson says: “There’s a place for everything. I think there’s a place for diesel. I think there’s a place for petrol. I think there’s a place for hybrid, for PHEV, and that’s exactly why Mazda has adopted a multi-solution approach to these things. We aren’t one of those manufacturers that’s gone down the EV-only route, and I doubt we will, unless until it becomes illegal to do anything other than that.
“There’ll be some people who live out in the sticks, who want a diesel car that can do 600 miles on a tank, can take less than 10 minutes to fill up, can pull a great big trailer and all these other things.
“I think that there’s a place for everything, and we build a great car.”
Indeed, he adds that sustainability is about more than just a blanket move to electrification:
“The reasons for phasing out diesel, which is about it not being clean, doesn’t necessarily apply to our engines, and there is still a long way to go into development of ICE.”
It is this cost consciousness that has often been a driver to electrify for fleets. For many, the promise of lower taxation, as well as lower per-mile costs in many cases, has proven attractive.
Despite Mazda’s limited presence in the EV market so far, Tomlinson agrees that the benefits are clear.
He says: “Financially, for a driver, it has made significant sense, and running costs for the fleet itself have made commercial sense.
“Diesel was the powertrain to have in fleet 10 years ago because it was cheaper to run. EV is essentially the new diesel from that perspective. It’s the right powertrain for a company car driver and for a fleet.
“The adoption of EV hasn’t happened at the rate that the Government was hoping, and therefore the ZEV Mandate is perhaps a little bit more aggressive than the natural run-rate has delivered.
“So, possibly there is a requirement to review it.
“They already have done that once, they’ve already relaxed the flexibilities, in terms of the CO2 targets and the offsets, and Mazda has benefitted from that.”
Like many others in the industry, Tomlinson is conscious that there are significant barriers to overcome before widespread EV adoption is possible.
He says: “The biggest issue the industry needs to tackle is creating used car demand for EVs, commensurate with the rate of registration of the new cars.
“That will be the biggest problem in the future. If you’ve got three-year-old, four-year-old EVs that retail customers don’t want, that’s where the problem will occur.
“I don’t know how Government could intervene. I think the only thing they could possibly do is look at charging infrastructure, making sure public charging was accelerated.
“I don’t necessarily think we should be spending taxpayers’ money on incentivising people on the new car side.
“I’m not a big fan personally of the EV Grant, because essentially the Government is spending taxpayers’ money to incentivise people who are thinking of spending £40,000, who arguably don’t need that money.”
Tomlinson believes that the issue of range anxiety is amplified with a used car, where consumers are less confident in battery performance, making access to charging even more important.
Why Mazda?
There are now more than 70 automotive brands active in the UK according to Autotrader, up from 45 in 2019, including an increasing number of Chinese brands, many of which are keen to poach fleet contracts from established manufacturers.
The Chinese brands, in particular, have gone all-in for their market entry, with the likes of OMODA&JAECOO building impressive dealer networks and hiring large fleet teams.
For Tomlinson, Mazda’s lower volumes and smaller team in fact give it an edge in the fleet market.
He says: “We’ve always had a relatively small team at Mazda, and therefore it’s very personal.
“We have three regional corporate sales managers. They have a personal relationship with each of their end-user fleets, the fleet manager there, and if that fleet doesn’t have a fleet manager that’s employed by that company, they’ll have a really strong relationship with the account manager at the leasing company that looks after that fleet.
“We’re very easy to do business with. We were one of the first manufacturers that went down the route of electronic fleet terms.
“We’re a small brand, but we do what we can to be as easy to do business with as possible. And hopefully, we build the right cars that people want.”
It is this personal touch and focus on relationships, not volumes, that has shielded Mazda from lower sales figures as more fleets turn to EVs, during a time when it has not had the EV range to support the transition.
Tomlinson expects the volumes to return as its EV range grows.
He explains: “We haven’t had EVs, but as a consequence of that we haven’t lost relationships, because we’ve maintained them through our personal touch. What we’ve lost is a little bit of volume over that period.
“We are very confident that when our products come back, those customers that we’ve maintained relationships with over the last three, four years, even though we may not have been able to sell them a number of cars in volume, we’ll start to sell them cars again in the future.”
As the Chinese brands have entered, the team at Mazda has been careful to keep business sustainable, offering fair terms, and not getting drawn into offering special one-off deals.
Tomlinson says: “I won’t do a deal today that I can’t do tomorrow, because that doesn’t create long-standing relationships.
“You don’t want a situation where ‘company A’ can choose a car today, but ‘company B’ can’t have it tomorrow because it’s gone up in price, because we reduced the terms or it was a special one off.
“We try to be as level and consistent as we can in our approach to the market.
“My job has never been to sell as many cars as I possibly can, because we have limited production on a global scale.
“My job has always been to come up with a volume plan that I believe is achievable, then go and deliver it.
“If we felt that we were under threat, though – as a result of the Chinese or changing market circumstances – then we’d adjust our volume plans accordingly.
“What we wouldn’t do is say ‘we’re going to do 50,000 cars a year every year’, build 50,000 cars, and then fill fields with registered cars or distress them to sell them.”
A bumpy but familiar road
Looking ahead, Tomlinson expects the fleet market to be defined by change.
Certainly, on the EV side, work is needed to improve the used market, which will in turn improve residual values, monthly payments, and the general stability of market dynamics.
Tomlinson says: “The change to EVs [is] about as big as the change from horse and cart to ICE, it’s quite a significant change that we’re all going through now. Completely different technologies. Just as it was back then. I think we just have to wait and see.”
But, as ever, he expects politics to be the biggest factor in ensuring security in the fleet market, with a Labour leadership race in the offing, and the threat of yet more Parliamentary change down the line.
Tomlinson says: “The biggest potential impact on the fleet market over the coming years is Government approach. If there’s a change in Government, and that drive for net zero changes, or it’s a slightly more relaxed position, that might change a world of things.
“We went through a period where company cars were the thing, then we had a situation where people took allowances and came out of their company cars. We then had a period of people going back into company cars, because actually running an EV was very tax efficient.
“Fiscal policy quite often affects the industry and personal choice, company car driver choice. It’s probably never really been any different. I don’t think that’ll necessarily change.”
Being impacted by such a confluence of factors means that the fleet market is truly unpredictable, even for Tomlinson as he enters his 15th year as Mazda’s head of fleet.
Mazda is therefore not making radical changes to its offering. Beyond the ‘multi-solution approach’ to product, it is focusing on making incremental improvements. It has grown its Fleet Specialist Dealer network from three to seven, and is continuing its focus on building relationships, with the hope that the Mazda6e and CX-6e will be able to translate these relationships into sales.
Tomlinson concludes: “The team has been incredibly busy, not necessarily selling cars.
“We’ve continued to build the relationships on the strength of the product we’ve got coming.
“Fingers crossed, the product will live up to expectation.”
