Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ford CEO says EVs will be sold 100% online with nonnegotiable price

usatoday.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

321–330 of 612 posts

Re: Ford CEO says EVs will be sold 100% online with nonnegotiable price

#321

Post by thematrixturtle »

olyjohn wrote: post #301
toomuchtodo wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Diplomacy is the art of saying “good dog” until you make it to the rock. Ford is learning what Tesla knew from the start: dealership interests aren’t aligned with EV manufacturers. There’s very little service revenue, and dealers are incentivized to add “market adjustments” to vehicles (which Ford dealers have been doing) creating a poor customer experience. Ford has existing dealerships and is going to have a heck o…

$3k in maintenance costs for 400,000km? I call bull shit. In Tesla tire sizes, you're looking at $1000 for a cheap ass set of tires. Certainly not gonna last 100,000 miles either.

You don't need to buy tires at the dealership, and in fact most people don't.

Re: Ford CEO says EVs will be sold 100% online with nonnegotiable price

#322

Post by dqpb »

Alupis wrote: post #127
paxys wrote: post #39

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…

> When I see "No Haggle, Fixed-Price, Online Only", I think "Rip Off", and I can't be the only one.

One thing is certain - the more middle men you have, the more expensive it will be.

Re: Ford CEO says EVs will be sold 100% online with nonnegotiable price

#323

Post by thaeli »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #305
olyjohn wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$3k in maintenance costs for 400,000km? I call bull shit. In Tesla tire sizes, you're looking at $1000 for a cheap ass set of tires. Certainly not gonna last 100,000 miles either.

Specifically says not including tires in the Twitter post.

Excluding the most expensive wear items is misleading though.

Re: Ford CEO says EVs will be sold 100% online with nonnegotiable price

#324

Post by zorak8me »

m348e912 wrote: post #302
medler wrote: post #82

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…

>>Target could have gone away, but they didn't. They bolted on an e-commerce platform and then they used their physical store to add groceries and return -- make returns really much easier than Amazon. I know this is off-topic, but the easiest return I ever made was an amazon return. I went through the return process on amazon's website and was given a QR code which took a few mins. I drove to the nearest Kohls, walk…

Re: bestbuy “showrooming” issues, I think they actually figured out how to make it a value driver for them, whereas it killed others. It’s a great place to look at products, and they price match so you can walk out the door with the product instead of waiting.

Re: Ford CEO says EVs will be sold 100% online with nonnegotiable price

#325

Post by jancsika »

grogenaut wrote: post #259
chemmail wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only time you can get a "good deal" on a car, is for a car no one wants anyways. Go ahead try it with a decent car.

Not just cars no one wants. Last car I bought, a Subaru Forrester, which is like 25% of cars in Seattle, I knocked $4000, off of msrp by haggling from 28k to 24k, cross shopping across dealers and walking in with a set price I was willing to pay after finding the lowest dealer. Also going in during 2 manufacturer rebates (one cash, one charity match), and at the end of the quarter. 2018s were starting to show up, bou…

If I had bought a Prius Prime a few months back I could have gotten $1000 cash back from Toyota, plus a $4500 federal tax credit. Right off the bat I would have beat your haggle by $1500. What a haggler I would have been!

But seriously-- if we're comparing "no haggle" to "haggle" then it doesn't really make sense to include the manufacturer rebates in your total. You'd presumably get those even if dealerships didn't exist.

Re: Ford CEO says EVs will be sold 100% online with nonnegotiable price

#326

Post by user3939382 »

medler wrote: post #82

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…

> This article takes an off-the-cuff comment from the CEO of Ford and reads too much into it

Ford announced 3 months ago that they were forming a new corporation, Ford Blue, whose purpose is to skirt state dealership laws in order to lawfully sell these EVs direct to consumers. So this is definitely not just a comment.

https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/ford/2022/03/02/ford-...

Re: Ford CEO says EVs will be sold 100% online with nonnegotiable price

#327

Post by thaeli »

justapassenger wrote: post #292
VirusNewbie wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your ICE doesn't need oil changes, transmission fluid, a timing belt, spark plugs, or any of that?

Oil change is maintenance not service. But ok, let’s include that. It’s done at the same time as rotating tires, so it only adds few extra bucks of revenue for dealers (yes, you can rotate yourself/at other places, same as you can do oil change). Transmission fluid for modern cars lasts about 100k miles. So you’ll do it maybe once, unlikely at your dealer as you won’t pay dealer tax for an old beater. Exactly the sam…

Timing belt is the only expensive thing on that list (because of labor) and very few American market vehicles use timing belts anymore. The market has gone almost entirely to timing chains these days.

Re: Ford CEO says EVs will be sold 100% online with nonnegotiable price

#328

Post by sundvor »

thaeli wrote: post #323
toomuchtodo wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Specifically says not including tires in the Twitter post.

Excluding the most expensive wear items is misleading though.

Tyre cost is highly variable depending on driving style etc - it makes sense to exclude it.

Re: Ford CEO says EVs will be sold 100% online with nonnegotiable price

#329

Post by gigatexal »

medler wrote: post #82

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…

Dealerships should go away though. They’re corrupt institutions that prey on the uniformed. New cars can be bought configured from the factory and delivered to one’s door. The dealership then only serves as a way to service the vehicle.

For used car purchases that’s a different story I guess. Maybe dealerships only exist to service cars and sell used ones.

Shrug.

Re: Ford CEO says EVs will be sold 100% online with nonnegotiable price

#330

Post by sundvor »

jvm wrote: post #157
medler wrote: post #82

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?

Not having to worry about price negotiation is a massive plus in my books.

Previously I could never sweet talk dealers into the kind of deals some of my mates could.

The Tesla model is such an improvement.

Post reply on HN