Fact is that a dealership shouldn't be a REQUIREMENT to sell a car.
I thought these are the 'Free Market Capitalism' sort of people. What are they afraid of?
'They Want To Be The Gatekeepers': Car Dealers Are Stopping Customers From Buying EVs
Submitted 1 year ago by jeffw@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world
https://jalopnik.com/car-dealers-are-stopping-customers-from-buying-evs-1851017999
Comments
Seraph@kbin.social 1 year ago
flipht@kbin.social 1 year ago
As with most things, "free market" is what they demand when they don't get have access to the market or can't command the whole market.
Once they have access or enough of a percentage to set the prices, suddenly the best thing is high barriers to entry and whatever else will help them maintain inelastic demand.
Buelldozer@lemmy.today 1 year ago
Many of the laws blocking direct to consumer sales of automobiles are old; literally dating back to when automobiles themselves were new. In many places those laws have been updated but that means we need to add nuance.
I live in Wyoming so that’s the example I’ll use. Our law was updated in 2017 to allow direct to consumer sales -IF- the manufacturer hasn’t previously sold new vehicles in the state using dealerships. So a company like Tesla or Rivian can sell directly to a consumer while the more traditional brands such as GM or Ford can’t EXCEPT…
“A direct sale manufacturer shall not include an affiliate or wholly owned subsidiary of a manufacturer’s line make that is presently sold or has previously been sold in this state through a new vehicle dealer.”
So for example Ford can’t direct sell any of its regular products here but they could direct sell things from their Troller brand. GMC can’t direct sell you a Terrain but they could direct sell you a Baojun.
So here in Wyoming it can be done by nearly any new auto manufacturer and the existing ones can also do it IF they’re willing to use a Brand that has never seen sold here before.
In other States, like Colorado, it’s also nuanced. They allow DtC sales but ONLY "…if the manufacturer makes only electric motor vehicles and has no franchised dealers of the same line-make. " So the normal auto manufacturers can’t do DtC at all UNLESS they get rid of all their In-State dealers.
You can look at this pdf, last updated in 2019, for a state by state breakdown but it’s a pile of nuance and protectionism that varies by state.
Kethal@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Do you know why the laws generally prohibit direct-to-consumer sales or why Wyoming has such odd exceptions?
ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 1 year ago
A ton of dealership money comes in due to their service side. For all electrics there’s no oil change. Brakes last ages. Fewer parts to break down. Etc. Dealerships will lose a ton of money on service work, including missing out on selling a new vehicle to a current customer that comes in for an oil change.
Also, almost no one should buy a Ford lightning. Only people that use it like a car and not a truck, but want to look like a truck owner.
slurpeesoforion@startrek.website 1 year ago
What are they afraid of?
Being forced to sell less profitable product. Somebody has to do it. But they’ll be damned if it’s going to be them.
stevedidWHAT@lemmy.world 1 year ago
It’s not, there are 60k private dealerships in the US and they weren’t even included in the original survey the Washington post article mentions which is what this article is written on
stevedidWHAT@lemmy.world 1 year ago
As always the devil is in the details. This article is about another article (Washington post, yall ever notice they get a lot of secondary coverage?) referring to a survey conducted by the sierra club (sierraclub.org/…/www.sierraclub.org%2Ffiles%2F202…)
They looked at 800 dealership responses from June to November of 2022. The number of dealerships asked are ratio’d with state population of dealerships. Supposedly this is sufficient statistically but the reality is:
They talked to 800 out of 18,000 franchised dealerships. They didn’t even touch on “private” dealerships which are closer to 60,000.
To imply that even the majority of dealerships are pushing against EV sales seems a bit off. Not the whole story.
For example, I wouldn’t recommend anyone buy an electric car if they can’t afford the larger than average maintainence prices. Accidents and damages also cost significantly more.
Just my 2c - looking forward to any conversation we can strike up
jeffw@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Statistically speaking, that’s a perfectly fine sample size (large even). It sounds like it’s fairly representative. You can play around here if you’d like: www.qualtrics.com/blog/calculating-sample-size/
Private dealerships tend to be more heavily focused on used car sales in my understanding.
stevedidWHAT@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Statistics or not, the fact remains that there were thousands of dealerships not accounted for. Human choices and interactions that weren’t experienced. So to generalize to every dealership or even most dealerships is dismissive of human choice and paints an inaccurate picture.
The correlations they draw from this data are far out of the bounds of what the stats actually say and what they do not say. Their data acquisition is sparsely outlined, this isn’t a research paper that was properly conducted. It’s a rando poll that all these news orgs like to pop up to mislead the public by bending the data to fit their narrative. Par for the course of the Washington post.
die444die@lemmy.world 1 year ago
What larger than average maintenance costs are you referring to?
hansl@lemmy.world 1 year ago
0$ on my Tesla in 5 years. Literally. No brake change, no transmission, no out of pocket maintenance, not even a windshield fix (though that’s more luck). Changed the tires once.
The battery is still above 90%. We don’t know how long that’s gonna last but we’ll probably just change the battery and not even the brakes.
BURN@lemmy.world 1 year ago
At least from what I remember off the top of my head Rivians are extraordinarily expensive to repair
Kage520@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I’d say that last maintenance thing for many highish brands like Mercedes, BMW, etc. Lots of people make that complaint. But electric cars really aren’t known for maintenance costs. If you corner really hard, since the car is heavier you might go through tires a little quicker but that’s all. The battery that people like to complain about the potential cost lasts like 100,000-300,000 miles, so it’s like comparing to a full engine swap in a gasoline car.
stevedidWHAT@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I was under the impression I had to pay more for a “winterized” version of the car so cold temperatures didn’t kill the battery, do you know if maybe this maintainence/replacement thing is more so a problem for cold places in terms of pricing? I’ve just heard numerous stories about teslas and the repair costs so that’s where that opinion had come from. The only thing I ever heard about other models was the battery and any electrical work if you need it done for some reason.
Makeitstop@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Not only is there a lower margin, but the fact that EVs are lower maintenance means they will get less money from a customer coming into their service department. Not that it even needs to get to anything as farsighted as that when a sales guy gets a larger commission for ane ICE vehicle. They aren’t going to spend time learning about a product that gets them paid less, they are going to say whatever it takes to steer a customer towards whatever gets them the biggest payday.
One of my favorite examples of ignorant dealers saying stupid shit was a dealer telling a would be customer that they weren’t able to bring EVs into their service dept because they have to be kept in a bomb proof shelter in case the battery explodes. This wasn’t even a sales guy, it was a manager in a service dept, at a dealer that (supposedly) sells and services EVs.
Ranvier@sopuli.xyz 1 year ago
Blog repost of a portion of a washington post story, found here: washingtonpost.com/…/car-dealerships-ev-sales/
or web archive version: web.archive.org/web/…/car-dealerships-ev-sales/
But please subscribe to new sources you use if you can, good journalism isn’t free.
jeffw@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Yeah, I thought about directly linking to WaPo, but people always complain about paywalls. I do post WaPo content on Lemmy at times, great outlet
Ranvier@sopuli.xyz 1 year ago
No worries, totally get it, just thought I’d offer up the direct link to the full story too for those who want it.
stevedidWHAT@lemmy.world 1 year ago
12ft.io is what I used
nezbyte@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Washington Post is currently $4/4-weeks or $40/year USD for unlimited articles.
Peanuts@lemmynsfw.com 1 year ago
Thats opposite my experience.
Sneptaur@pawb.social 1 year ago
It seems this is mostly applying to rural dealerships that sell American brands
jeffw@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Source on this? That’s not what the Sierra Club study referenced here implies
n2burns@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
Some dealerships are better than others, but in my experience of buying a car in the last year, most dealerships oblivious to EVs and the majority of the rest are hostile. Even if dealerships know anything about EVs, many are looking at the lack of EV maintenance and see disappearing recurring income for oil changes, etc
nicetriangle@kbin.social 1 year ago
Hopefully people will wise up and stop preventing consumers from buying direct.
looseanus@lemm.ee 1 year ago
tsonfeir@lemm.ee 1 year ago
More like “Market Adjustment”
NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 1 year ago
Yeah… actually reading the article, it sounds like it is mostly annecdotes about salespeople who are bad at their jobs.
I don’t know the BMW lineup, but that sounds like someone skimmed the literature and conflated the max speed of a BEV with the electric range of a PHEV’s battery.
Limited supply and normal dealer upselling.
The one annecdote that DOES seem “right” to me is
And that is 100% accurate. People (think they) understand ICE cars and generally know what car they want. When I bought my current car, I had it narrowed down to two vehicles. It was go in, do a test drive, and then head to the other dealer. End of the day I had my car. The extent of my conversation with the salesperson was to ask about the headlights and it ended up just being “So can I just turn the car on, turn it off, and check if the lights are still on?”. Because salespeople are generally idiots if it isn’t the top of the line model.
With BEVs? I am the kind of person who does his own research. The extent of my conversation with a dealer when I tried to buy one last year was “So can I give you my number to call me when you have this or next year’s model in stock? No? Okay…”. But people are going to have questions.
Which gets to the other aspect. Dealerships have been spoiled with the past few years of shortages and low interest rates. Cars sold themselves and people would gladly pay insane mark-ups for the luxury of being able to buy one. But shortages are mostly a thing of the past and interest rates are insane. So people aren’t going to run around with a sack of cash and hope they can finish the sale before anyone realizes they only paid 150% on the undercoating.
They are going to have questions and need to be told why one car is better than another.
And when all you care about is sales per hour? Why waste time?
dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world 1 year ago
The thing about the i3 episode here that I find particularly baffling is that anyone who is into cars at all, which hopefully includes someone who sells them for a living, should know that James May is a prominent owner of one. Yes, that James May, the “oh cock” guy, famous for along with the other two driving and talking about many, many cars on the television. He personally own(ed) one. He’s done multiple films and videos on it, notwithstanding the segment from their Grand Tour show which included his going head to head with a Golf and has (I just checked) 2.7 million views on Youtube.
There should be no person on Earth in a position to look at or sell a BMW i3 who doesn’t know every single little thing about it.
Patch@feddit.uk 1 year ago
More to the point, who in their right mind thinks that BMW would be selling a car with a 45mph top speed? Like, at all?
The fact that a person who works for a BMW dealership of all people would genuinely think this is simply not credible.
NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 1 year ago
Top Gear got cancelled, again. It is not the powerhouse it maybe used to be around the time they had Matt LeBlanc as a host because whatshisface assaulted someone over a sandwich and got cancelled for a few years? Hell, I assume there are a significant number of people who just know it as “some show ymfah made fun of” at this point.
Also, I am pretty sure the average person buying a BMW just wants a luxury car and doesn’t give a shit about car culture. I don’t know the models well enough, but I assume if you asked that salesperson about their SUV or their super luxury sedan, they would know every single inch of it.
“Car culture” people are not going to be asking the dealer questions about specs. Well, I know a guy who would but only because he wants to show that he knows more than they do.
Which is kind of the real point of it. Dealerships want to sell volume. Spending time answering every single question is not volume. I think they very much need to recalculate that, but, for the period this likely happened, “What is the range on this car” is comparable to “So I know this says I should use 89 octane gas. But can I just use 87 octane gas? I know they are different but one is a lot cheaper and…”. Where the response to both is to just half-ass and face them the moment you see a new customer.
As for “they have 2.7 million views on youtube”. The OfflineTV video where they cooked food with some streamer and (Anime with) Alvin Zhou has 1.3 million views. Normie Jesus (aka “Charlie” aka “Moist Critical”)'s latest drama commentary video has 1.9 million views in 19 hours. 2.7 million is really not the accomplishment you think it is, relative to the current day celebrities.
vivadanang@lemm.ee 1 year ago
The power Dealerships have in the US is wacky. They look at auto sales as a way to fuel their service sales - vehicles with half the moving parts (ev’s) don’t appeal nearly as much in that angle. And Tesla really pissed them all off mightily by sidestepping the entire dealer system, leading to a hilarious situation in Texas where deliveries (still, iirc) to Texans can’t just happen at the Tesla outlet - you can’t walk in and walk out with a car, it has to come across state lines. businessinsider.com/tesla-texas-cars-ship-out-of-…
Texas fucked Tesla around, so Tesla built a factory there… and it continues lol. Dealers have a lot of power.
NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 1 year ago
Like most things tesla, they also demonstrate the benefits of those regulations.
The cars you see at the tesla stores are, theoretically, the best of the best. So… the ones where things sort of fit together and you can part them outside in the rain.
The ones that get delivered direct to you? Those are the ones with that tesla seal of approval and all their wonderful wonderful build quality problems. So you are either buying THAT specific car or no car at all. As opposed to getting a different car on the lot or a different trim or whatever.
But, because that car has been delivered to you after you already ordered it? Backing out gets a lot harder. Same with saying “Okay, I am going to need to replace that windshield anwyay so how about you either increase my service coverage or take the price of repairs off the bill?”. And being able to compare it to other cars goes a long way toward spotting the obvious defects.
And most dealerships are associated with at least one used car dealership. That is why trade-ins work and are often a case of just leaving the keys with them when you leave. As opposed to needing to coordinate with a third party which adds even more pressure to accept the car where the door doesn’t really close.
Dealerships are INCREDIBLY predatory and one of the best examples of “late stage capitalism”. But the “tesla model” very much demonstrates why there are reasons to salvage the dealership model rather than burn it to the ground.
jballs@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
I’ve been using a car broker for a decade now and can confirm that it is indeed the best way to buy a car. You can tell them generally what you’re looking for, they’ll line up 3 or 4 models for you to compare. You go to one location to check them all out at the same time, and they handle everything else. You never have to go into a dealership at all. It’s amazing.
AA5B@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Huh, neat. I almost used one about 8 years ago when I bought my last car but they didn’t do a good job of selling their service. It just didn’t seem worth it at the time
northendtrooper@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
Ty for a good breakdown. As tradition jalopnik using shitty titles to drum up drama. When the reality is less dramatic. But should be noted that dealerships have been scalping with markups left and right.