A quarter of a century at Toyota made Alan Barrett a familiar face in UK fleet. Now he is Head of Fleet at Geely Auto UK, building the operation from the ground up. Ian Smith sat down with him.
Alan Barrett
There are few better grounding schools for a fleet career than Toyota, and Alan Barrett spent the best part of a quarter of a century there, learning the fleet trade from the ground up and becoming one of the more familiar faces in the business. He is the kind of operator who knows that the fleet manager on the other end of the phone is more likely to be out in the yard than sat at a desk.
So, when Barrett left to take on the Head of Fleet role at Geely Auto UK, the obvious question was worth asking: why walk away from a brand as settled as Toyota for a Chinese newcomer still finding its feet in Britain?
“It wasn’t a difficult choice,” he tells me. “The growth of Chinese brands hasn’t escaped anybody’s notice. There is undoubtedly, and we’re seeing this already, huge opportunity for the brand. It was, for me, an opportunity to really get things going here.” A quarter of a century of Toyota experience, he adds, is exactly what he intends to bring to bear: “I can bring that experience with me and help grow Geely Auto’s customer base and grow our market share. It was difficult to leave Toyota, but very easy to join Geely Auto.”
Momentum from a standing start
The numbers suggest his timing is good. Geely Auto sold 2,300 vehicles into leasing channels in the first half of the year to the end of June, split across corporate leasing and the public sector. Barrett expects that to reach 6,000 by the end of the year and, notably, the brand is already running ahead of plan.
That is a striking figure for a manufacturer with just two cars currently on sale in the UK: the all-electric Geely EX5 and the plug-in hybrid Starray. We’ve spent a week with each here at Fleetpoint, and both landed well. The Geely EX5 Max struck us as “exactly what a good fleet car should be: comfortable, well-equipped, cheap to run and easy to live with”, a genuinely affordable electric SUV carrying a 2% Benefit-in-Kind rate and an eight-year, 125,000-mile warranty. The Starray, its plug-in hybrid stablemate, earned equal praise as a “smart hybrid choice” and a stepping stone for the many fleet drivers who aren’t ready to go fully electric just yet. Barrett is quick to note the reception; the Starray, I tell him, was outstanding on test, and he doesn’t disagree.
Winning the driver, not just the fleet
The harder task for any challenger brand is not winning the fleet manager but winning the driver, the person who has to pick a Geely Auto off a choice list sitting next to a BMW or a Volkswagen. Barrett is bullish. “I think we’re already doing it, but we want to do more,” he says. A dedicated corporate specialist, Chris Durden, has been brought in to develop the user-chooser channel, and Barrett’s conviction rests on a simple proposition: the package.
“The key to it is the package of price and specification, and in that regard, we’ll win all day long,” he says. “Actually, I’d be worried if I were one of the legacy brands, because I think they’ll struggle to compete with us on pricing and specification.”
His route to the driver is an old-fashioned one: get people behind the wheel. Geely Auto has been out in force at Company Car in Action, Fleet Procure and the Everything Electric shows with its full range. “If we get demonstrators into these organisations, we get people behind the wheel, we will absolutely win. It’s already starting to happen, and it’ll only accelerate.”
Salary sacrifice and the £20,990 EX2
Salary sacrifice has become the volume engine for EV uptake, and the forthcoming Geely EX2, pitched at £20,990, puts genuinely low monthly costs within reach. Barrett confirms a partnership with a major sal-sac provider is imminent, with a press release due shortly, alongside existing access through Octopus. But he is careful not to overstate it. “It’s not really where our major focus has been. It’s one of a mix of channels.”
The Geely EX2, he predicts, could be a standout: strong in the sales cycle and the public sector, with unexpected interest from rental companies and approaches from big broker groups wanting exclusive supply. “I’m very confident that demand could exceed supply for this vehicle.”
Tackling the downtime objection
Downtime is the objection that has killed more than one new brand in fleet, and Barrett knows it. His answer is a rapidly expanding network. Geely Auto will have 50 service partners appointed by the end of the year, it is at 49 as we speak, spread across 115 locations, all with service capability. “They’re all, or nearly all, very well-established fleet operators who know and understand the needs of customers of all sizes,” he says. “They totally understand that for anyone using a car for their business, minimising downtime is absolutely critical.”
He leans, too, on the ownership package our reviewers rated so highly: an eight-year vehicle and battery warranty, four years of roadside assistance, and technical support direct from Geely Auto UK. “I don’t know of any OEM that provides better service than that for a passenger-car network — and of course, as our footprint expands, we’ll only get better and better.”
A named team, built at pace
Fleet managers, as I put to him, are a hard bunch to reach, rarely at the desk, often in the yard, and in need of a named contact rather than a retailer. Barrett has been building exactly that. Since starting on 1 May he has taken the fleet operation from two people to five, including himself, with dedicated managers across contract hire, rental and corporate salary sacrifice, plus a key accounts manager for the larger partners. All of them operate nationally. “It’s very early days, but we’re going to increase volume rapidly. I expect we’ll have to split the team regionally at some point fairly soon.”
Pricing Strategy
The 2026 ZEV mandate — 33% zero-emission registrations, with £15,000-per-car penalties is one area where being an all-electrified newcomer is an advantage. “With a two-car range at the moment, both in the C-SUV segment, one pure EV and the other a PHEV, we’re largely shielded from a lot of the market volatility – and not impacted by the ZEV mandate”, Barrett explains. “I believe our pricing is such that we lead anyway, rather than follow. I don’t believe it affects us in the same way it affects some other OEMs.” On residuals — the perennial worry with a young brand — he is relaxed: the first batch of used cars is heading to market now, and “our RVs are comparable with anything else in the segment.”
An exciting road ahead
Ask Barrett what he most wants fleet decision-makers to take away, and it comes back to momentum: the new team, the new structure, the first-half volumes, and a footprint of 115 locations able to deliver and service on a national scale. “That’s who we’re talking to here — people who need to keep their vehicles on the road.”
It is, by any measure, an ambitious start. A brand that barely registered on the UK fleet radar eighteen months ago now has two well-reviewed cars, a third on the way at a headline price, a growing service network and a fleet team being built at pace by someone who has done it all before. There is work still to do but the direction of travel is unmistakable.
Geely Auto is playing the long game in UK fleet, and on this evidence it is playing it seriously. As Barrett puts it, the plan is to grow “very rapidly”, and it is hard not to find that rather exciting.
Ian Smith, Fleetpoint
