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

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

#391

Post by antisthenes »

rootusrootus wrote: post #133
walrus01 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

maybe the amount of profit made in being a middle-man between the manufacturer and consumer end-user is unreasonable and unwarranted?

It's only unreasonable if they are not providing value. Lots of us get into business exactly because we can provide value and simultaneously become wealthy. This is no sin.

Something can provide value and still be considered unreasonable profiteering.

Health care in the US comes to mind. Is it beneficial? Yes. Are the prices marked up beyond insanity through bad incentives and rent-seeking? Also, yes.

It's not an either or.

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

#392

Post by bombcar »

philistine wrote: post #235
raz32dust wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you are saying doesn't make sense UNLESS there is a monopoly. Let's say it costs Ford $10k to manufacture the car. Let's say their average profit per car is $2k, and the dealership gets $1k on average - which means that ON AVERAGE, the dealer sells each car for $13k. Some people might get a good deal for $10k, and some pay $16k. MSRP is likely set to $16k. You are saying that in the fully online world, Ford woul…

Dude just wants to think that his haggling is putting them on top of all of us. When the CEO of Ford says he's spending 2k more than Tesla for delivery. We all lose, them included, but haggling makes them believe they're coming ahead.

They don’t realize the whole dealership setup is designed to make the haggler think he got a good deal. The industry is built around capturing people who think they’re pulling a fast one on the dealer.

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

#393

Post by bombcar »

therockspush wrote: post #360
Alupis wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I enjoy a car haggle every now and then, but what makes it so fun is that its one of the few places you can haggle. Try to haggle down the price of a bean burrito at taco bell and see how much fun that is. There are all kinds of bean burritos to choose from in mi barrio, but they aren't budging to make a deal. The same people haggling for cars are paying over asking on house bids. I've haggled at a guitar center, but…

The real value of haggling is realizing some externality that you can take advantage of - a hail damaged car, a untuned guitar, something that would cost them to deal with and you can take off their hands.

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

#394

Post by bombcar »

robotresearcher wrote: post #316
Alupis wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't follow this logic. The article says Ford is going 100% online for these cars, meaning there will be no other reference price available. Ford can charge whatever they want, so long as some people are willing to pay it - and during COVID we've seen people more than willing to way overpay on cars. There is no competition with Ford's direct sales website. None. At least dealerships attempt to compete on price.

> There is no competition with Ford's direct sales website. None. Do I have to buy an F150 Lightning? I do not.

That’s the missing link. They’re assuming that the person has to get the F150 - but they could buy something else, but nothing, wait for a cyber truck - many other options.

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

#395

Post by Thorrez »

user3939382 wrote: post #326
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-...

Slightly related, Tesla built a store on tribal land to avoid state laws.

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

#396

Post by bombcar »

jancsika wrote: post #325
grogenaut wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Of course in this market if you had bought one you could have immediately drove it back onto the lot and sold it back for more than you paid …

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

#398

Post by bombcar »

topspin wrote: post #239
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…

> is there any counterpoint to this view? I don't think the counterpoint has changed since it was codified in the laws of US states: limit the power of large corporations and their influence over sovereign states. Our ancestors were rather circumspect about corporate power within the US and created mechanisms to insulate themselves from that power. The emergence of multinational corporations has naturally produced a…

A huge percentage of people who bitch about dealers have never bought a new car from one - and the majority of those who do, continue to go to the same dealer thereafter.

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

#399

Post by king-geedorah »

cuteboy19 wrote: post #379
heavyset_go wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, manufacturers' interests are often not aligned with retail customers' interests. For example, with Tesla, the company optimizes delivery numbers of cars sold by sacrificing quality control, and their service center model is anemic and almost an afterthought, especially when it comes to addressing the QC issues their customers experience. For every Tesla with 400k miles on them with a few thousand dolla…

Dealerships are rent seeking entities that exist purely due to laws that force consumers to deal with them and only them. They are not in either consumer or manufacturers interest.

I whole heartedly agreed on this point but have grown to see another side of the issue. I don’t want to over glamorize it but in the north east car dealers have done exceptionally well, and often were the wealthiest people in the towns they serviced. A dealership in Pennsylvania recounted to me how the founder of the dealership more or less built the town square and at one pointed owned more than half the town. Now this may seem negative but the founder is long dead and the dealership now employees a several dozen locals all making very strong salaries, all with minimal educational requirements (just a bachelors cause it’s in vogue).

Overall I guess the point I want to make is even thought it is rent seeking (many industries are) this one seems to provide for so many communities all across America. I find it hard to believe that ford will pass up the savings to the consumers. We all know that profits will be returned to shareholders.

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

#400

Post by alexb_ »

bombcar wrote: post #378
alexb_ wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I owned 6 Teslas over the last several years. ??????? Why on earth would you need this many Teslas? Maybe if you are buying so many teslas then it makes sense why you don't need them serviced - you barely give them enough time to wear themselves out!

If you buy the latest and greatest and continuously upgrade to the next greatest it’s not that expensive; often cheaper than leasing.

Maybe it's cheaper than leasing the latest and greatest, but not everyone has an unlimited pool of money all the time, and the assumption that this type of purchasing behavior is in any way typical or representative of anything is absurd and out of touch at best, and purposefully misleading for the benefit of Tesla at worst.
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