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

Post by rascul » Fri, Jun 03, 2022, 9:47 AM UTC

norman784 wrote: post #433

spikels wrote: post #334

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Ford reorganized back in March so that their EV business (Model e) is separate from the legacy ICE business (Ford Blue). There was speculation at the time that this was in part free itself of the dealership sales model. The dealers would keep the dying ICE business while the fast growing EV business would start with clean slate. Farley was quoted describing the EV sales model as: > "It's going to be much more efficie…

Excuse my ignorance, but how I understand is that ICE can't be sold directly to the customers, so that's why dealerships exists (?), so my question is, are EV not regulated or treated differently than ICE?

Post by yurishimo » Fri, Jun 03, 2022, 9:53 AM UTC

SoftTalker wrote: post #374

sammalloy wrote: post #196

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> I'm under the impression that the service part of the dealership _is_ the profitable part If you drive a Ford, sure, it needs a lot of service. Which is why I stopped buying Ford. Toyota and Honda don’t need much service, and I don’t see how they are money makers for the dealer. And when you move to EV, you need even less service than before since the is no ICE to maintain.

I have a 19 year old Ford Focus that has been great. It's not much on creature comforts but it starts and runs like new. I've had two Hondas of the same vintage with dead transmissions.

Post by ssharp » Fri, Jun 03, 2022, 9:55 AM UTC

babypuncher wrote: post #403

devy wrote: post #369

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> Maybe going direct is the secret plan, but I don’t see how they get there. Yeah, the dealership and the state level dealership associations aren't going to go out of business without some good fight. Even though I personally don't like the markup to be paid at the dealerships, but they exist for some good reasons: educate the consumers, financing, DMV paperwork and most importantly service your vehicles. EVs need m…

>> educate the consumers Every dealership I've been to has been more interested in feeding me whatever line of crap they think will get me to buy a car, not actually educating me about the different products available. >> financing, DMV paperwork Tesla and Carvana have proven these can be taken care of without a third party dealership. In most cases, financing is provided by a bank or credit union, not the dealership…

Post by op00to » Fri, Jun 03, 2022, 10:00 AM UTC

bombcar wrote: post #384

ericlewis wrote: post #364

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I've known people who work at Best Buy and they get their products substantially cheaper, just as the online retailers do. There is some level of bake in for storing it at the store... but not really much different from sitting in an amazon warehouse for instance, most best buys have large warehouses in the back you'd never be aware of. Many people aren't aware of the price matching nor take advantage of it, they als…

Best Butt is basically a group of warehouses across the country - order from them online and you may find your order shipped from random Beat Buy stores. And for many of their products they all sell at MSRP anyway (apple laptops say) so they’re already matching Amazon et Al. And things like hdmi cables are some off brand and so they don’t price match anyway. They have a pretty slick setup going, also jumped in on the…

Post by throwaway742 » Fri, Jun 03, 2022, 10:03 AM UTC

poutine wrote: post #176

serf wrote: post #85

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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…

All manufacturers can suffer from poor repair times, not only Tesla. Especially these days. I waited six months for a brake booster replacement in my Audi SQ5 as it sat in the service center. They did give me a loaner the whole time though...