111–120 of 612 posts
I recently bought a Prius Prime and the amount of work I had to do to buy it at MSRP was ridiculous. If you have an oversubscribed car the dealer model just doesn’t work. If car companies are going to compete in the future they will have to either eliminate dealers or at least force some type of structure to the sales process, otherwise people will gravitate to the companies that do (like Tesla).
Tesla may not be the future of EVs, but we have to thank them for dragging everyone else into the present.
Non-negotiable car sales aren't new, Saturn was famous for doing it in the 90s. Their whole deal was to try to target younger buyers that didn't like the typical haggling process. Toyota did the same thing with their Scion sub-brand for the same reasons too.
Tesla may not be the future of EVs, but we have to thank them for dragging everyone else into the present.
Absolutely: dealers make the car buying experience terrible and expensive. Good riddance to that scum of an industry.
A lot has been said about the dealership model in the last few years, and the almost universal consensus is that it is an unnecessary and predatory industry and all auto makers should just sell cars directly like Tesla does. That being said, is there any counterpoint to this view? Are there any benefits that dealerships offer today over direct sales? What would we lose if we got rid of every dealership? If there is t…
>That being said, is there any counterpoint to this view? Are there any benefits that dealerships offer today over direct sales? the only thing I can think to say is that they are still a convenient repair facility, Tesla is fairly notorious for slow turn-around for repair.[0] I think a nice middle-ground would be the conversion of dealerships into showrooms/receiving-centers/repair facilities -- oust the sales porti…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> That being said, is there any counterpoint to this view? 1. A national dealership network is at minimum, a soft-guarantee that your car can be maintained/recalled/fixed without you jumping through hoops. Unfortunately, that soft-guarantee is saddled with all the other baggage of car dealerships. Pushy sales-people, extended warranties, predatory loans, etc. 2. It forces you to buy local, so not all the money flows…
> 2. It forces you to buy local, so not all the money flows out of your community, and into Detroit - some of it stays to circulate in your town. I think this is a kind of ‘broken window’ fallacy - ie unless there is a genuine service being offered then it’s kind of like requiring gardeners to use toe-clippers (ie the local economy are paying extra to hire people to do basically nothing). > 3. People want to sell/tra…
I'm not going to argue with you as to whether or not the theory behind it is correct (my feelings on the subject are complicated), but I will point out that there's a major political movement in this country to 'keep it local', that has varying degrees of support in varying levels of government. Regardless of whether or not this desire is correct, whether its organic, or whether its simply manufactured through propaganda - it's present, and it gets acted upon.
> Tesla offers a trade-in program so that appears to be similar in some respects?
Which I address in point #4 - at the point where they start doing a major amount of business in trade-ins, they start looking like... A corporate-owned dealership, as opposed to a franchised one. A lot of the cost savings of 'show room-only' stores go away when you start having to deal with used inventory, scheduling test-drives, fixing cars in your dealership garage, etc.
Obviously, when they were first getting started, their used market was tiny, and none of those business needs/costs were present. But as their cars age/if they ever manage to successfully sell more models/if they somehow manage to capture a major chunk of the overall auto market, their 'stores' will have to offer pretty much every service that a traditional dealership does.
A lot has been said about the dealership model in the last few years, and the almost universal consensus is that it is an unnecessary and predatory industry and all auto makers should just sell cars directly like Tesla does. That being said, is there any counterpoint to this view? Are there any benefits that dealerships offer today over direct sales? What would we lose if we got rid of every dealership? If there is t…
>That being said, is there any counterpoint to this view? Are there any benefits that dealerships offer today over direct sales? the only thing I can think to say is that they are still a convenient repair facility, Tesla is fairly notorious for slow turn-around for repair.[0] I think a nice middle-ground would be the conversion of dealerships into showrooms/receiving-centers/repair facilities -- oust the sales porti…
A lot has been said about the dealership model in the last few years, and the almost universal consensus is that it is an unnecessary and predatory industry and all auto makers should just sell cars directly like Tesla does. That being said, is there any counterpoint to this view? Are there any benefits that dealerships offer today over direct sales? What would we lose if we got rid of every dealership? If there is t…
In my opinion, we lose a lot, some things practical and others societal. Practically first, when I’m in the market for a new vehicle, I’m not sure which I honestly want. I like being able to go to a dealership and find something that convinced me otherwise from what I came to originally look at it. In the most recent case, I was really wanting a truck and being able to see them in person, how I fit, etc, was what sol…
A lack of dealerships does not mean that there are no showrooms or test drives. There's nothing stopping Ford, BMW, Mercedes or whoever from putting in a showroom next to a Tesla showroom. In actuality it makes it easier since a showroom doesn't have to have inventory; you can put them in places where a normal car dealership couldn't exist (this is exactly what Tesla is doing). I saw a Genesis showroom in an airport once...
A lot has been said about the dealership model in the last few years, and the almost universal consensus is that it is an unnecessary and predatory industry and all auto makers should just sell cars directly like Tesla does. That being said, is there any counterpoint to this view? Are there any benefits that dealerships offer today over direct sales? What would we lose if we got rid of every dealership? If there is t…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> That being said, is there any counterpoint to this view? 1. A national dealership network is at minimum, a soft-guarantee that your car can be maintained/recalled/fixed without you jumping through hoops. Unfortunately, that soft-guarantee is saddled with all the other baggage of car dealerships. Pushy sales-people, extended warranties, predatory loans, etc. 2. It forces you to buy local, so not all the money flows…
Looking at Detroit.. I don’t think a lot of money is flowing there.
In recent years there has been meaningful investment and growth in Detroit [0], but a lot of auto money is in surrounding areas like Grosse Pointe [2] and Oakland county [1].
[0]: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DETR826PCPI
[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Michigan_locations_b...
[2]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grosse_Pointe,_Michigan
Edit: mentioned Grosse Pointe