Yeah… actually reading the article, it sounds like it is mostly annecdotes about salespeople who are bad at their jobs.
One afternoon, he strolled into his local dealership and asked to test drive the BMW i3, a small, sporty car with a range of up to 150 miles. The salesperson stopped him. “You can’t drive that car on the highway,” Young recalls the salesperson saying, explaining that the car couldn’t go over 45 miles per hour.
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.
Initially, Richards was hoping to buy an F-150 Lightning, but the truck was back-ordered. The salesperson could only get him an expensive trim that came with a high dealer markup.
Limited supply and normal dealer upselling.
The one annecdote that DOES seem “right” to me is
Dealers may have less economic incentive to sell electric vehicles. Buzz Smith, a former Chevrolet car salesman who now helps train dealers to sell EVs, says it can take much longer to sell an electric car than a gas-powered one. A gas car, he said, might take no more than an hour in a single visit to sell, yielding a tidy commission.
But for electric vehicles, “it was usually four visits, an hour each, before they would buy the EV,” Smith said. Customers want to make sure they understand the technology, how to charge it and more. “So I’m volunteering to take a 75 percent pay cut — and no salesman wants to do that.”
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?
As an aside. Apparently the latest “hip” way to shop for cars is to use a Broker website. Similar to the logic of Carmax back in the day where you are paying a bit more for the peace of mind of not having to deal with a negotiation. But, because of insane upselling from dealers, it actually comes out comparable or even cheaper. Found out about them in between wanting to buy a BEV and deciding to wait until the '24 or '25 models for a few improvements, but from limited testing, it actually seems legit.
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.
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.
Even the comical Isetta had a top speed north of 60.
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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.
Like, I am sure there are dealerships that specifically cater to the kind of customer who NEEDS their salesperson to be a “car guy” as it were. But the vast majority do not.
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.
Hell, the ymfah “Top Gear” episode for Dark Souls 2 is at 1.2M views.
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. https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-texas-cars-ship-out-of-state-sell-texans-2021-6
Texas fucked Tesla around, so Tesla built a factory there… and it continues lol. Dealers have a lot of power.
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.
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.
oof, hadn’t even considered the bait and switch opportunities. yuck.
yet another reason to live musk free
This is bullshit, unless you have actual stats. Yes, a few years ago Tesla had quality issues for their hand made cars and when they were scaling up for the first time. However they put a lot into getting better and it’s really not the same mess.
I have no idea how they compare to others but they’re much better than they were. I recently bought one and even knowing common issues and walking the lot, I didn’t see anything anywhere
Apparently the latest “hip” way to shop for cars is to use a Broker website.
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.
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
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.
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?
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.
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 first 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 new by a dealership.
In other States, like Colorado, 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 but companies like Tesla and Rivian can do it no problem.
You can look at this pdf, last updated in 2019, for a state by state breakdown.
Do you know why the laws generally prohibit direct-to-consumer sales or why Wyoming has such odd exceptions?
Do you know why the laws generally prohibit direct-to-consumer sales…
My understanding is that way back in the beginning of automobiles the manufacturers couldn’t afford to build sales and service outlets all over the place so they followed a franchise model. The franchise owners, called dealers, would invest in building a Dealership that bought vehicles from the manufacturer and then resell them to customers, when those vehicles broke they would fix (service) them.
After a while the auto manufacturers built up enough money and started building their own Dealerships but that put them in direct competition with the existing Franchise Dealerships. It also put their existing Franchise Dealerships at a competitive disadvantage because vehicles at their own Dealerships didn’t have the markup on them like the ones the Franchise Dealerships were forced to purchase. In many places the Auto Makers didn’t want to do Service either, they just wanted to open Showrooms and do Sales.
So the Franchise Dealerships went to their State Legislatures and had them pass laws so that the Auto Manufacturers couldn’t open their own Dealerships or sell directly to consumers. It was, and is, protectionism but it makes a certain amount of sense from both the Franchise Dealership and Consumer perspective. Franchise Dealerships didn’t want to lose their businesses to unfair competition, communities didn’t want to lose the jobs, and customers didn’t want to lose the ability to get their vehicles fixed.
…or why Wyoming has such odd exceptions?
If you look at the PDF I linked you’ll quickly notice that almost all of the States that allow DtC Sales have odd exceptions and the common theme is protecting EXISTING Franchise Dealerships while creating a path for DtC sales for new Brands or types of Vehicles. Most of these laws were passed between 2014 and 2020 and they exist because of how much demand there was for Tesla’s vehicles which are only sold Direct to Consumer. Citizens of a State wanted to buy them and couldn’t so they pushed their State Governments into changing the laws.
Thanks. The history of it makes the current system a bit clearer.
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.
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.
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
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 an 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.
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 (https://www.sierraclub.org/sites/www.sierraclub.org%2Ffiles%2F2023-05%2FSierraClubRevUpReport2023.pdf)
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 repair prices, batteries, headlights, etc.
Just my 2c - looking forward to any conversation we can strike up
Why do you think the conclusions aren’t fair? Does the sample seem biased? I’m very confused as to what you’re getting at.
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: https://www.qualtrics.com/blog/calculating-sample-size/
Private dealerships tend to be more heavily focused on used car sales in my understanding.
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.
So we cannot learn anything from representative sampling? I’m still not following. You just invalidated like 99% of published studies with that argument
In the link you provided, the methods seem clear enough to me?
One glaringly obvious “oddity” was the fact that they did representation based on state by state average, but then lumped each state into a group and then tried to say that was representative of the nation? How does that follow? Should it not be based off the nations as a whole if we’re making those generalizations? Margin of error being 3% of thousands is a lot of dealerships.
All I’m saying is that people need to excercise caution when it comes to statistics. These might be statistically sound measurements but the story they actually tell is much more specific. The data only tells you what you measured, meaning is derived.
For example, remember the chip shortage? Wonder why they all had such a hard time getting those cars in. Wonder how many of those dealerships if they could get EVs would sell them regardless of the opinion of one franchise owner - because business swings at its own pace. If that owner pushed against them they’d just fire him and hire someone else who won’t have a problem with it.
Maybe they don’t sell EVs because the populace legitimately doesn’t want one.
They also mention “translating answers to yes or no” what does that entail? Why was a critical data transformation not explained in detail??
They make no effort to explain any potential conflicts or any errors with their paper whatsoever- this is a boutique poll presented inappropriately and will be misconstrued by the media as always and echoers.
Don’t lump this poll with real data science.
It would be a lot easier for you to just learn the basics of statistics dude
K
Sigh. Your first post started off so intelligently too, then you had to respond.
Will you elaborate so we can discuss where I went wrong or did you just post this as an insult to feel better about yourself (idrk why else you’d come with a fork to people quietly eating their soup)
Statistics or not…
Right here
Poor wording at best - what exactly in my analysis is wrong regarding the sampling size. They based off state by state, then grouped into regions and then tried to generalize to the whole country, despite not talking to any private dealerships which are a significant populace.
Im being genuine too, nobody has specifically said what was wrong and what the “right interpretation” was.
Not one. You’ve gotta understand where I’m coming from on this aspect id hope. This isn’t sarcasm or anything else - please work with me to correct my understanding.
Why would you account for used car lots in a study about buying a brand new EV from a company dealership?
Because the headline is saying that dealerships won’t sell them period. Which would include used ev vehicles, which is my entire point. The data they collected made little to no effort to distinguish exactly what they were measuring for - new sales by franchised dealerships that were sample sized based off state to state (region to region) as an explanation for a national average/consensus. It doesn’t make sense to me but maybe there’s an aspect about sample sizing I’m not fully grasping.
Believe it or not I too went through high school science which specifically and religiously looked at statistics p error and all that fun stuff. Perhaps an aspect has faded from memory and I’m way off but I have yet to have 1 personal actually explain where I’m missing understanding or just flat out wrong just quips and insults so I’m not so convinced. Where am I misunderstanding?
What larger than average maintenance costs are you referring to?
At least from what I remember off the top of my head Rivians are extraordinarily expensive to repair
Repairs are not the same as maintenance though, and Rivians are extraordinarily expensive just in general.
Are you telling me a brand that has like 10,000 cars on the road in the entire USA isn’t easy to fix??
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You can’t compare an expensive luxury model to a compact car regardless of it being electric or gasoline.
Is it more expensive compared to the Audi Q7, a Range Rover or a Lamborghini Urus?
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.
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.
Some BEVs dont have heat pumps. If you live in a cold area, don’t buy a BEV without a heat pump. Heat pumps are able to scavenge heat energy from a variety of sources and move it around the vehicle to help the battery charge.
Might be the winter tires. Since the car is heavier I think tires might need to be a little beefier, and thus cost a little more.
Tesla did a pretty good job with their heat pump. Even with it though your range really suffers. I can’t remember exactly but it might take your range from 325 miles to something like 250/260. Without the heat pump I remember hearing something closer to half range, but that might be battery manufacturer specific, not sure. So like the other commenter said, make sure you get an EV with a heat pump if you live in a cold area.
Blog repost of a portion of a washington post story, found here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2023/11/09/car-dealerships-ev-sales/
or web archive version: https://web.archive.org/web/20231111005720/https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2023/11/09/car-dealerships-ev-sales/
But please subscribe to new sources you use if you can, good journalism isn’t free.
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
No worries, totally get it, just thought I’d offer up the direct link to the full story too for those who want it.
12ft.io is what I used
Washington Post is currently $4/4-weeks or $40/year USD for unlimited articles.
Hopefully people will wise up and stop preventing consumers from buying direct.
More like “Market Adjustment”
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