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Amazon Vehicles

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Re: Amazon Vehicles

#191

Post by overcast »

prawn wrote: post #160
overcast wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously. My last car (BMW) from seven years ago, I did entirely through email. Sent a handful of dealerships their cost sheet with the options I wanted, until I got the price I was looking for. Few months later when it was built and shipped from Germany, I drove my old car to the dealership, and drove off with the new one. Done. As an aside, I just ordered a mattress site unseen from an online only company, and it…

Do you have government/fleet auctions in the US? In Australia, government fleet vehicles are auctioned after a couple of years of use and you can pick up cars before they are grabbed by dealers and topped by margins. Last car I bought was through an online auction. Didn't actually see the car in person until I went to pick it up.

Yes we have government auctions, I just don't buy into someone else's problems, even though it's significantly less in cost.

Re: Amazon Vehicles

#192

Post by steve19 »

deegles wrote: post #6

Where's the one-click button? :) Seriously though, if I were in the market for buying a car I would love to use Amazon. I wonder what the restrictions are for them to register as a dealership in each state...

This is going to make dealers very nervous. Right now dealerships have all sorts of legal protections ... but as Uber and then self driving cars take over, these antiquated protections are slowly going to disappear.

Re: Amazon Vehicles

#193

Post by taspeotis »

illumin8 wrote: post #188
smnscu wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now BMW offers Apple CarPlay, might be a reason to buy the upgraded screen. Anyway it's ridiculously expensive for what it is, but it gives them space to negotiate and/or make a profit.

Funny, I just rented an entry level Hyundai Sonata, which has both Carplay and Android Auto, but also is completely entry level in every other way, such as: cloth seats, no sunroof, no keyless entry (remote has a clicker for doors and trunk), no push button start (insert the key and turn like a decade ago), etc. I was very pleasantly surprised that with the touch-screen, which supported swipe and seemed generally (th…

> it's still very basic for now

I think that's actually a feature, less possibilities to distract a driver with.

Re: Amazon Vehicles

#195

Post by 2bitencryption »

vecinu wrote: post #159
htedatsu wrote: post #115

This will be a... clarifying moment for eBay. I make my living on eBay and gross about 10x the average USA wage. Used stuff is involved. eBay once loveed people who bought and sold used stuff. They are one of the biggest used car venues in the world. They want to sell new stuff and become Amazon. Now Amazon is beating eBay on its own turf. Maybe eBay will have to remember their roots and start taking care of both its…

You make about $300k/yr by selling used items on eBay? Consistently?

in my experience if a commentor just has to let you know how much they are making, they are lying or not telling the whole truth. welcome to HN.

Re: Amazon Vehicles

#196

Post by adventured »

nhumrich wrote: post #178
deegles wrote: post #6

Where's the one-click button? :) Seriously though, if I were in the market for buying a car I would love to use Amazon. I wonder what the restrictions are for them to register as a dealership in each state...

People seem to be missing the point. You can't actually buy cars on amazon (at least not yet) its just a shopping tool where it lists details, reviews, and msrp

People aren't missing the point. The parent comment directly recognized that you can't buy the vehicle from Amazon.

Re: Amazon Vehicles

#198

Post by pdwetz »

UnoriginalGuy wrote: post #184
driverdan wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should never pay more than invoice for a new car. For that matter you should never buy a new car, it doesn't make economic sense.

> it doesn't make economic sense People repeat this a lot, but it isn't that cut and dry. People often ONLY include the direct cost of the two vehicles. They don't include the massively discounted loans on new vehicles (e.g. 0% APR), the warranties (e.g. 3-5 years bumper to bumper), sometimes better MPG (newer model, etc), cheaper insurance, skipping state inspection for the first three-five years, new tires & other…

Cheaper insurance? I don't follow the logic for that one. If you have an older car you don't need full coverage = less out of pocket.

Re: Amazon Vehicles

#199

Post by bfung »

rckclmbr wrote: post #158
ThePhysicist wrote: post #121

What's really interesting about this business model is not the fact that you can buy a car online, it's the price transparency that you create with this: Car dealers often have 10-20 % margin on a car sale, and they make most of their money by providing services to you after you bought the car, so they are usually able to give you some big discounts. Also, as they usually receive a bonus by the car maker for selling…

KBB has existed for quite a while for precisely this reason.

I used to work for company writing software for car dealerships, and there's a lot under those brands that may make you think twice, even about KBB.

Note that this was 2005 - 2011; I haven't kept up with the industry to know if it had changed any, or at all.

I'll talk about the used car market, since the new car market doesn't have that much pricing variation.

There are several pricing companies for cars in the U.S. Don't forget these companies are also for-profit companies, so the prices consumers get to see are generally also inflated a bit (retail price). The actual market price before the dealership acquires the car is known as the wholesale price. Who determines this wholesale price? Well, the prices actually come from car auctions - a place where buyers that either work independently or for dealers go to restock on used car inventory. So if you really, really had the time - go to a car auction (ex: https://www.autoreturn.com/san-francisco-ca/auction-terms/) and get your car at wholesale price.

Now, what does this have to do with pricing guides such as KBB, BlackBook, NADA (nada.com), Edmunds? Well, these companies have people who go to auctions and record the winning bids. All the data they collect ends up being the wholesale price, usually only seen by the dealership. The retail price is then generally a bump of ~$2000 of the wholesale price, depending on the car + other data factors. The kicker is, back in 200x, the data collection at auctions were just samples, all done manually by pencil and paper, and submitted back to KBB, etc. Often times, the data is so incomplete, the pricing guides would all be off quite a bit between each other. There's also regional variations, as KBB is more west coast based, so the prices tend to be higher.

Anyways, that's the surface of things. Also, I don't know if the industry's changed or not. Right when I left that position, KBB and all the other site started to make web enabled API's - we actually used to get shipped a dll w/a data file to integrate into our SaaS product.

So take away - KBB or other pricing guide will still have a higher price than what you can actually get a car for.

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