Polestar is doing the hybrid model too. online order, single price, single wait list and leveraging a set of volvo dealerships for delivery and maintenance. i think this is the perfect model.
Ford CEO says EVs will be sold 100% online with nonnegotiable price
481–490 of 612 posts
Re: Ford CEO says EVs will be sold 100% online with nonnegotiable price
#482Tesla 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.
Those “young buyers” from the 90s are now 50+ years old.
So literally nobody likes the dealership sales model. Even in the 90s the old buyers hated it too.
The only reason it still exists is because of successful lobbying by dealer networks over 70+ years ago to codify their business into law.
Re: Ford CEO says EVs will be sold 100% online with nonnegotiable price
#483Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 t…
This only convinces me dealerships should be gotten rid of. That's a lot of money sucked out of the car buying process. I'd rather pay less to a manufacturer than pay for a dealer to own a town in PA.
Re: Ford CEO says EVs will be sold 100% online with nonnegotiable price
#484Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
> There is a reason most people hate car dealerships.
I really, really don't understand why the model won't die. I'm guessing regulatory malfeasance.
Re: Ford CEO says EVs will be sold 100% online with nonnegotiable price
#485Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just because you don't notice issues don't mean there aren't issues. Tesla is widely regarded by "car people," both those who own them and those who don't, as having some of the worst fit and finish of any production car in the US. It's been that way since the Roadster. Here's a video review of the most expensive Tesla you can buy, by someone who rates cars professionally and rates it among the best he's ever driven,…
Paint flecks on the mirror? I'm dying.
Sloppy and chipped paint is pretty crazy when you're paying $130k+ for a car.
Re: Ford CEO says EVs will be sold 100% online with nonnegotiable price
#486Earlier 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.
Sorry there's just no way this is true. It doesn't even make sense. For this to be possible the loan payment would have to be less than the lease payment after depreciation. Even before depreciation this almost never happens without a huge down payment (which negates the point entirely).
Re: Ford CEO says EVs will be sold 100% online with nonnegotiable price
#487Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
>Carvana have proven these can be taken care of without a third party dealership.
Ah yes, Carvana, the company who has had its dealer license revoked in multiple States for a variety of violations, whose stock is down 90% (while insiders cashed out) and laid off thousands of people. What have they "proven"?
Re: Ford CEO says EVs will be sold 100% online with nonnegotiable price
#488Earlier quoted context omitted.
Distance typo fixed, thank you! Happy to have provided a chuckle.
> 400k km ? LOL Why not just use megameters? 400Mm OK, something about that looks odd. But what's the point in SI units if you can't actually use them? Maybe 250k miles?
Nope, miles are always a bad choice.
Re: Ford CEO says EVs will be sold 100% online with nonnegotiable price
#489Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
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…
>Someone on Twitter recently posted their Model S turning over 400,000km with only $3k in maintenance costs.
Sounds like a Toyota
Re: Ford CEO says EVs will be sold 100% online with nonnegotiable price
#490This 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…
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…
Is that an actual legal reorganization of the company that would separate contractual obligations, or is it more of an accounting and reporting thing?