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Car dealers say they can’t sell EVs, tell Biden to slow their rollout
(arstechnica.com)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
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.