545
Car dealers say they can’t sell EVs, tell Biden to slow their rollout
(arstechnica.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 28 Nov 2023
545 points (93.9% liked)
Technology
59983 readers
2154 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Dealers will cry about their inventory while refusing to budge on various “market adjustments”.
Boo hoo. Be competitive and watch the inventory flow.
I've been eyeing an Ioniq 5 for about 18 months now and just checked local pricing again and they haven't budged an inch on pricing (even now with 2024 models being sold with 2023 models left on the lot) nor are they even carrying inventory outside of the most expensive trim packages of Limited AWD. I'm interested in range, so I'm wanting a Limited RWD but they aren't being stocked.
This article screams "I'm not doing my job and it's all your fault!"
There's a 2008 style crash coming in the credit market for cars. There's a lot of subprime loans and a lot of car companies that got into financing that shouldn't have. Wait til they really get squeezed. Who am I kidding tho, they will just ask for a bail out.
Some of us are still miffed about the 2008 bailouts, which ran entirely counter to the market forces rhetoric. Then the police turned off all the cameras and ran OWS off with riot squads.
No resolution was offered. even Dodd-Frank was reversed by Trump.
So you can expect a lot of civil unrest. It's been due since the great depression, about a century ago.
Wrong! They will let it crash a bit and everyone will panic and see that shit is about to get real. The government will offer to defer the pain by bailing out the very rich and get things moving again, it’s the only way the government at the time will be able to hold onto power. People are fucking idiots so they’ll do nothing because they don’t like being uncomfortable for a short time even if it means they are getting slowly buttraped over the medium to long term
When beater 20 year old trucks can't even be found for <$10k, you know somethings gotta give
And the best part is you who foresaw it and tried to warn everyone, will have to pay personally towards the bailout
The dealer near me has added an extra 5 grand for market adjustment too.
Yeah, dealers around here have a huge markup over MSRP, “because there’s so much demand.”
Okay, I can wait.
Meanwhile, up here in Canada I put a down payment on an IONIQ 5 Ultimate Edition (Canadian equivalent of the US ‘Limited’ model) back in early April 2022, and it still hasn’t been ordered, because Hyundai decided to flood the US market while stiffing the Canadian market.
Hyundai (and other EV makers) are fucking around, and then blaming the market.
Yep sounds similar to what's happening here. Since the car was first released you could spec one out with Limited RWD on Hyundai's site but none existed in the entire country up until the last few months when they began trickling out. The website tells you that you can't actually order or build the car you want and instead must visit a dealer and choose something among their inventory. I'm sorry but I'm not going to compromise on a major purchase like this for a brand new vehicle. Dealerships can eat a dick.
While I still think that Hyundai engineering and design did some real magic with the IONIQ 5, I just can’t help but feel like the rest of the company is just screwing the pooch on this car. They’ve flooded the US market with models people there don’t seem to want to buy, and dealership lots often have a dozen or more waiting to be sold.
Meanwhile, here in Canada buying one is damn near impossible. That doesn’t seem to stop them from sending out mass marketing materials and ads trying to sell them (or the IONIQ 6), mind you — I just wish they had focussed first on ensuring their biggest boosters globally were getting the cars they want, as opposed to putting lots of cars nobody seems to want on US dealership lots.
(FWIW, my dealership told me they weren’t being allowed by Hyundai to order any 2023 IONIQ 5s. This seems to be a fairly common occurrence across all dealerships here in Canada, with just a few cars trickling in each month).
Jfc. I have a feeling this is going to become a much more common tale with high tech or precision manufactured goods, goods just being diverted from western markets to Group of Friends and Axis of Evil countries. Hopefully America doesn't go full isolationist and we continue to seek global trade such as the trans pac trade agreement and similar trade agreements, keep the dollar nice and strong.
Issue is the dealership deals made with the auto manufacturers. Inventory on hand is often times (not including some of that bs that had dealerships marking stuff way over msrp) only set up to make the dealership a few thousand in profits.
For any major price reductions that are really needed, the auto manufacturers would have to be giving the vehicles to the dealerships for less money.
In other words, ford will have to drop prices for dealerships to drop prices.
This is bananas to me. The new model is out but last year's model isn't discounted? No wonder nobody likes dar dealers.
Saw one dealer do that to a Honda civic r then brag they got someone to actually pay it
That's why they do it - they only work a fraction of the amount for the same profit by gouging the everliving fuck out of a small number of people.
Are you sure it wasn't a Thundercougarfalconbird?
One word: thundercougerfalconbird
Shit dealers (and especially the sales people) tend to not at all be trained on how to sell these cars, and can be openly hostile towards people interested in them. EVs don't make them as much money on service.
They can be trained all day every day, but if they know their profits are lower they'll do anything they can to avoid having to work with EVs.
Yup something I keep getting into arguments about at work. Sales makes a mistake on their order. And I somehow as the tech end up sorting it. And that sales person keeps their entire sales commission. I’ve been telling mgmt forever take away the commission if there are reasonable timeframe issues or incorrect selections made by the sales agent. That will make them make sure they perfect it to get their pay.
Edit: I’d like to note I’m not even asking for the commission idc I just want sales to do shit properly. Lol
Took us forever and is still contested now and again, but we managed to force the sales process yo include product managers or owners. Without an estimate from them, which is created in coordination with the engineers and developers, no offer is being made anymore. Certain sales people are butthurt, because the estimated costs are often too high for our "price sensitive clients" as in: they don't know how to sell our products on added value rather than on lower cost.
New car sales people do not give a single fuck about whether the car comes back for service. They get paid for selling cars, full stop. It's possible that management is making ICE car sales commissions higher than EV; that would create an incentive to push ICE.
Commissions on EV sales for legacy automakers are dismal. None of the legacy automakers are making EVs at scale so they are losing 10s of thousands of dollars per EV they sell. Sales personnel aren’t moving them because they have no incentive to do so. Then these companies complain about how there is no demand while the EV sector is growing exponentially.
Tesla got to scale while legacy automakers were all laughing at them and now they have to compete by gaslighting the marketplace about how there is no demand.
I’ve been in an EV since 2020 and am never going back. When people start to wake up to how convenient and comfortable EVs are and stop buying into all of the negative media, it’s only going to snowball from there.
Are you able to take it for road trips, or do you primarily use it locally?
Not OP, but middle America resident here. Family vacationed in my Bolt EUV 2023 to Florida and had to plan activities at most of my charge stops because of how slow it DC fast charges (50kw). Mostly meals, but locating museums and other stuff wasn't to hard. CCS network is not good, but it's good enough with the right planning. Yeah road trips aren't ideal in the Bolt, but since Ford didn't make but 15 base model F-150 Lightnings and I wasn't paying $30,000 over MSRP for 1 of 3 trucks in stock East of the Mississippi, I bought the Bolt instead planning to put my daughter in it when she's ready to drive. I would've preferred utility and faster DC charging, but had to make do with what was available. Road tripping in a Tesla would be much easier and quicker.
Before you ask, no you can't buy the base model Lightning direct from Ford. You can all other trims though.
I drove it about 60-80 miles a day on a Houston commute for about 2 years. Now I took it on the road and am trying out the digital nomad lifestyle. Just drove 1000miles in 2 days, from sea level to 10,000ft. I haven’t had a problem finding chargers or with anything else.
If you’re road-tripping, there are apps to plan the optimal route based on whether you want to arrive in the shortest time or don’t mind stopping for a while longer at parks, restaurants, or shopping places. I generally drive about 2 1/2-3 hrs, then stop for a half hour or so, give or take 10 minutes if I’m in a rush or want to stop for lunch or something. When im in a hotel, I just search for hotels that have EV chargers and charge overnighit… those are usually free. When I’m in a new area renting a place, I haven’t had an issue finding a plug to slow charge or a grocery store or something that has a fast charger.
I guess to answer your question, I primarily take it on road trips, but use it locally in the destinations I land in.
I guess my concern was charging time. Granted, I haven't really done any research, but I had it in my head that it would take a long time to charge (slow charging?). Overnight would be fine, but I was picturing driving for a few hours, and then charging for a few hours, over and over again.
Yeah. A lot of people don’t have first hand experience and there is a lot of misinformation out there.
It does take about an hour to charge if you go from empty to full, but it charges slower as you get closer to 100%. That’s why they say it takes about half an hour to get an 80% charge.
I usually try to plan my routes where I charge after getting under 10% and only save my longer charges for places that have some kind of point of interest, like a park, or a meal break. The apps strategize all of that stuff and make the route, you just have the option of optimizing if you want to adjust the route.
It does seem to break up a drive a bit nicer and leave you with more energy when you hit your destination, but would be more irritating if I was under a time crunch and didn’t plan the time accordingly.
They'll also fail to mention that it's the fastest growing new car segment. They may not me moving as many as they want, but they're definitely moving.
I don't know how it is in the us but here in Germany many (single-brand-)dealers are also licensed mechanics (for that brand) - and since EVs are taking much less repairing than traditional cars they are basically shooting themselves in the foot by selling them
Yeah, smthg smthg capitalism, smthg smthg free market, amirite?
Don’t forget “too big to fail.”