181–190 of 612 posts
What's the bottleneck with Ford building electric powertrains? Is it still the semiconductor shortage? Batteries? Production tooling?
Are the dealerships going to sue Ford? It will be interesting to watch.
Almost certainly. Dealers enjoy a state sanctioned monopoly on new car sales, and even non-Tesla dealers sued Tesla for their no-dealer business model: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_US_dealership_disputes#S...
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>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…
Agreed. I have nothing but bad experiences taking cars to the dealership for repair, and normally choose to avoid them for everything except for recalls. However, when buying an EV, I want to know that the manufacturer has repair facilities nearby since third-party EV mechanics are almost non-existent at this point. If Ford is deliberately bypassing their dealerships for sales, then I would expect the repair service…
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…
When I see "No Haggle, Fixed-Price, Online Only", I think "Rip Off", and I can't be the only one. It's not that I enjoy haggling with car salesmen, walking out the door and getting hunted down in the parking lot like an animal... I don't... in fact I hate it. But at the end of the day I get a deal I'm satisfied and comfortable with - and it's always below MSRP - far below. I think what we're seeing here is a combinat…
You would only feel ripped off because some dealerships say "No Haggle" and some do haggle. If every dealership has the same price for a specific car then literally by definition you cannot get ripped off.
You're also fixating too much on the meaning of MSRP. Before the car shortage MSRP was basically just a marketing number to anchor negotiations at a high number (except for cars in super high demand). Some automakers were notorious for deeply discounting below MSRP and some didn't discount much.
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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.
If you want a non-negotiable price, just don't negotiate the price? I mean a firm asking price doesn't mean a good price.
So telling people "just don't negotiate" is about as reasonable as telling people "just don't tip" in mandatory tipping situations, it is a nice concept but ignores the economic reality of people trapped in the messed up system.
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…
Local profit? That is, in many towns, my understanding is that the local dealerships are relatively well off. Which implies that a bit more of the money is kept local to where the cars are being sold. I'm guessing this is less true today than in years past.
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Absolutely: dealers make the car buying experience terrible and expensive. Good riddance to that scum of an industry.
Wait till you deal with real estate agents, or any middle man.
Dealers are government corruption plain and simple. They offer next to nothing, sometimes scam us outright, but we are required to patronize them if we want a new vehicle.
Real estate agents on the other hand mostly just charge too much.
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Try the car. Pay cash. Negotiate. Sell yours. Choose from different brands. Chat with the owner. Get serviced.
People who like negotiations generally think they're good at it. Guess what? The dealer sells multiple cars per day. You don't know enough to be a good negotiator against them. Same thing as venture capital vs company founders. Founders found a couple of companies which do a couple of rounds each. VCs make way more investments.
Right - so let's get rid of negotiations all together and everyone pays whatever absurd price the sales team at Ford can think of without laughing out loud.
This isn't a box of cookies folks... besides your house, it's likely the most expensive thing you'll ever buy.
There is no "one" price for the asset... unless we remove all the competition that drives down prices (dealerships) and put all the assets into a single basket owned by one of a small handful of manufacturers in the world. What could go wrong?
This article takes an off-the-cuff comment from the CEO of Ford and reads too much into it IMO. He wasn’t saying dealerships are going away; he was actually saying the opposite. The point he was making was that Ford is going to adopt some of Tesla’s practices while using the dealership network to compete with them. Here’s the quote with more context: “I believe for retail, we have to -- it's kind of like what happene…
How does it ‘read too much into it’? He literally says they need to go to a 100% online order, no inventory, no negotiation sales model. That’s a HUGE a change from today.
This article takes an off-the-cuff comment from the CEO of Ford and reads too much into it IMO. He wasn’t saying dealerships are going away; he was actually saying the opposite. The point he was making was that Ford is going to adopt some of Tesla’s practices while using the dealership network to compete with them. Here’s the quote with more context: “I believe for retail, we have to -- it's kind of like what happene…
Selling online without negotiated price is a big change. That should make the dealerships really uncomfortable in the long run… he's kind of saying "oh the dealerships could rent out Mustangs" but is that actually realistic?
https://twitter.com/pluginalberta/status/1531406942119137281
> "We only profit in one way: from new car sales and new car sales alone," Maron said. "We can't ... profit from services because our cars have far less parts than gas-powered cars. There's no regular service visits for engine tune-ups and oil changes. ... We don't make money off financing programs. We don't have insurance products or add-ons. A franchise dealer would look at this and scratch their heads. They would not know how to make money on this model."
> Maron says Tesla is fully committed to its mission of replacing all gas-powered cars with electric vehicles -- a mission auto dealers may not be eager to embrace.
> "We don't simply believe that electric vehicles represent a nice complement to gas-powered cars," Maron said. "We believe it's imperative they are replaced entirely by electric vehicles. ... It would be impossible for traditional dealers to convey this message adequately. This isn't a knock on them, but dealers are not fundamentally committed to the mission of EVs — we are. They make 99% of their revenue off of gas-powered cars. If you're opening a Yankees team store, are you going to ask a lifelong Red Sox fan to manage it?"
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/johanabhuiyan/tesla-sla... (2016: 7 Reasons Why Tesla Doesn't Want To Sell Through Dealerships)