These stories piss me off, because I tried from January to May to buy a Chevy Bolt from a dozen plus dealers and all I found was markups, falsely advertising customer pre-ordered vehicles as available for sale, and even 3 year old models with 5000 miles being advertised as “new.”
I finally gave up and bought a used car from an independent honest dealer. All this talk of EV’s not being able to sell is just the dealer tactics coming back to haunt them and I say fuck them
Start selling cheaper ones. The day a sub $20,000 EV comes along that can do more than 150 miles on a charge you will all shut up and take my money. I don’t need fancy features, I just need something that can get me to work and back with a bit of wiggle room and never have to pay for gas again. 150 miles would be more than sufficient, but 200 would be PERFECT. Leaf and Bolt are close, can we get something a little cheaper, pretty please?
Do you need new? I got a used bolt for about 12k.
Can a used bolt go 150miles?
Buy used? I don’t understand the argument that they need to be cheaper as new, when you wouldn’t have bought new before but now you will for electric? I’ve had my bolt since COVID started and it’s been great. Don’t buy leaf tho
Can buy used for 13-17k depending, ~200mi interstate range
It is not in a dealers best interest to sell vehicles that require less costly services for the life of the car which is a big ongoing revenue for many dealerships.
Sales people do not have that long a perspective. The article does talk about 100-200% turnover every year, which is again horrible practices coming back to bite them, but the sales person is only interested in immediate commission and bonus
I doubt this is a factor. As there will be plenty of people willing so sell vehicles if there is a proper market for it and compete with others regardless of downstream effects (make short-term gains and get out of the game, you have yours… that kind of thinking).
If I would have to guess, price and supporting infra are the issue. Here in the EU these things sell like mad, even with the high price… but the development of a dense changing infra is going quickly.
In Australia, Deloitte’s shared this breakdown.
“On average, barely 5 per cent of a dealer’s profit comes from new car sales. The majority (about 50 per cent) comes from parts and service, while the remainder comes from finance and insurance (30 per cent) and the balance is from used cars (15 per cent).”
In the US it appears to be very similar.
“So where does the majority of a dealership’s profit come from? It’s not from car sales, at least not directly. It’s from the service and parts department, which accounts for the other 49.6% of the dealership’s gross profits, according to NADA.”
https://www.edmunds.com/car-buying/where-does-the-car-dealer-make-money.html
I needed to drive 5 hours to get one at a good price. And they were moving tones of that model though. The other places I went to also mentioned their EVs were moving very quickly, one I was looking at was bought within 2 days of listing. So this doesn’t at all match with my experience. Maybe they’re referring to the super expensive luxury EVs rather than lower price ones?
They can’t sell EVs because they cost too fucking much. Everything’s gone up but our wages, but we’re supposed to just keep buying shit anyway? Fuck this economy.
BEVs are fundamentally more expensive than conventional cars. That is the real problem here. Blaming the dealers won’t change that.
But not if you take into account the leveled cost of ownership. But it’s an up front cost rather than spread out, so it’s more difficult. Plus the cost can be way lower if people okay with shorter range smaller vehicles.
I own my 2008 Sentra outright. Why should I take on a car payment just to “go electric” when the car I have still runs well?
Huge discounts on EVs? I really need to get out and see this!
if only EVs remain, there won’t be any problem selling.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
After making record profits in the wake of the pandemic and the collapse of just-in-time inventory chains, they’re now complaining that selling electric vehicles is too hard.
Almost 4,000 dealers from around the United States have sent an open letter to President Joe Biden calling for the government to slow down its plan to increase EV adoption between now and 2032.
More and more car buyers are opting to go fully electric each year, although even a record 2023 will fail to see EV uptake reach double-digit percentages.
Mindful of the fact that transportation accounts for the largest segment of US carbon emissions and that our car-centric society encourages driving, the US Department of Energy published a proposed rule in April that would alter the way the government calculates each automaker’s corporate average fuel efficiency.
Over the summer, industry analysts at Cox Auto made plenty of headlines with data showing that new EV inventory was growing.
Helpfully, the dealers published a complete list of the 3,882 signatories, making it very easy for people to see which businesses are opposing action on climate change.
The original article contains 586 words, the summary contains 183 words. Saved 69%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Nice
Also dealerships: $10k mark up on this bad boy!
Why do we even have dealerships?
It’s a delicate ecosystem: the car salesmen need their cut to spend on drinking and gambling or else the bars and dog tracks will shut down causing more unemployment.
We don’t even know if the batteries on those things will worsen with time, like all other batteries do.
You cant replace the battery on a EW, it’s cheaper to buy a new car.
We don’t even know if the batteries on those things will worsen with time, like all other batteries do.
We absolutely do. Of course they degrade over time. But they last much monger than expected. Today they all come with 100,000mile 8-10year warranties.
You cant replace the battery on a EW, it’s cheaper to buy a new car.
Of course you can! They’re designed to be replaced. Most of them can be swapped out in about an hour at an equipped shop. And the cost (outside of warrantee) is typically about 20-30% the cost of the car. So it’s absolutely cheaper to replace the battery than buy new.
Thank you, I didn’t know this. But paying 30% of the new car price after they expire sounds awful… But at least it’s possible.
