well, ford told them they had to, among other things, hire and train competent and knowledgeable sales and service staff, and that’s just a bridge too far for your typical car dealer
Ford would do themselves a huge favor to start direct to consumer sells like Tesla does… I’m almost 1000% positive that lightning would’ve been a much bigger deal had dealers been excluded… EV6 also, both had ridiculous markups, $70K for base models w/dealership packages… it was insane!
It seems the only thing standing between Ford and greatness… are dealerships smdh
I remember shopping around for a used old Leaf. Couldn’t answer the most basic questions, like if the model came with Chademo or not (first few model year Leafs had DCFC as optional)
And it’s not like they didn’t have a chance to see it coming, either. Our 2010 Chevy Volt buying experience was exactly the same. “Oh, yeah - the new kid - he’s the one who knows about the hybrids…”
And the kid was like 23, fresh out of college.
And then the service center, ugh. We did have something weird going on with ours (it eventually got swapped out under Lemon Laws) but basically they were having to fly in engineers/techs from GM in Detroit because like the 1 mechanic at our dealer who took like 1 Volt maintenance training class … couldn’t figure anything out at all.
That was >12 years ago now. ICE dealers have had time to see this coming. They have no interest in adapting.
Hyundai Sonata. Two Hyundai dealers in town. Four more along the way until I get to a Hyundai dealer with a tech that can actually service my car three hours of driving later. But from a known brand with a local dealer they said. Service will be local they said.
In May I bought my Kia EV and had the weird experience of the dealer’s sales manager telling me pure EV FUD foolishness about range anxiety while I was signing the purchase papers.
I think the first time I ever test drive a car was about 20 years ago and it was a Kia Rio. The salesman couldn’t stop telling me how shitty some other car company’s cars were and had nothing to say about the Rio.
I keep reflecting on how my experience was so much different than everyone else, and how lucky I got. In 2018 even and the sales dude actually knew his shit, even if he was slightly more PHEV than BEV.
I feel liked I found a damned unicorn based on the horror stories I hear regularly.
At some places they’re still not even knowledgeable about fucking hybrids. Went with the wife a couple weeks ago to toyota to test drive a couple and the salesman that went with us couldn’t answer literally anything she asked about them, I had to do it.
I’d love to just be an EV salesman for like 4 hours a day after my normal 7-3 workday. I’d be like do you love gas stations? No? Me either. Do you have a garage or drive to a work parking lot? Yes? Well you’d be perfect for an electric car. It’s the convenience and knowledge that you’re helping reduce carbon emissions after only a few years.
Every time I’ve ever test driven a car with a salesman it’s been the dumbest experience of my life. People who clearly don’t know a damn thing about the car, and can only tell you “this thing really suits you” or something. If I ask “does it have apple CarPlay” they gotta look it up because they don’t even know. I can only imagine it’s worse for EVs.
They don’t even know anything about their ice vehicles… I taught so many salespeople about things they didn’t know last time I shopped because I had spent a lot of time researching that particular truck and its trims.
given the low profit and sales what did anyone expect? spending over a million dollars and agreeing to no haggle pricing when the average profit on a Mach E, it has been stated it may be lower than five percent per sale and most of that from the manufacturer.
So if they clear two to three thousand dollars on the sale of one Mach E the pay back is… well, never. I am not even counting the investment in training sales persons who may just be gone in less than a year.
Ford cannot make the vehicle at a profit so it had to extract some of the costs from the dealers. Ford has around three thousand dealers in the US and their total sales was 1.8m - which means the average is six hundred per dealer but its obvious many dealers are small town types who might do half that at best.
The numbers were never going to support a large number of dealerships going forward and we will end up seeing the smaller local stores lost to the big super stores and that may not be a desirable outcome.
this puts me in a pretty small minority but I don’t actually believe the automakers when they say that they can’t make a sufficient profit on evs or that they lose money on every one they make. be it accounting tricks or outright lying, but spending billions of dollars on something that’s effectively a marketing exercise just doesn’t make any sense.
I think any ev from a big 3 brand (with possible exception of the bolt) isn’t actually designed to make money or develop technology and is designed as a showpiece to show consumers that they’re innovative and are in with the latest trends
I’d probably disagree with you just due to the significant costs associated with engineering and manufacturing a new product in general let alone a relatively new category. I will say I do feel like EV products from the big 3 sans GM were rushed so you’re probably right to some degree.
They’re not saying that. That’s how it’s being reported. What the actual manufacturers are saying is “this is new tech and all the cost is in the up front, so we’re going to lose money per car until the R&D is sufficiently amortized.” Which is then being turned into click-bait headlines of “X Manufacturer is losing $500,000 per car!”
this would make sense if they were consistently communicating this exact message. but instead we get stuff like ford raising prices and justifying it by saying that they’re losing money on their evs - if losing money was both true and expected, there would be no need for them to do or say any of this.
well, ford told them they had to, among other things, hire and train competent and knowledgeable sales and service staff, and that’s just a bridge too far for your typical car dealer
Sounds like a personal problem for the dealers
Ford would do themselves a huge favor to start direct to consumer sells like Tesla does… I’m almost 1000% positive that lightning would’ve been a much bigger deal had dealers been excluded… EV6 also, both had ridiculous markups, $70K for base models w/dealership packages… it was insane!
It seems the only thing standing between Ford and greatness… are dealerships smdh
That’s ok. Only the strong survive. Hope they are customer centric.
Competent sales staff, jeezus! What’s next? Competent mechanics?
test driving EVs with sales staff is awful. They know next to nothing about the car or EVs in general.
I remember shopping around for a used old Leaf. Couldn’t answer the most basic questions, like if the model came with Chademo or not (first few model year Leafs had DCFC as optional)
And it’s not like they didn’t have a chance to see it coming, either. Our 2010 Chevy Volt buying experience was exactly the same. “Oh, yeah - the new kid - he’s the one who knows about the hybrids…”
And the kid was like 23, fresh out of college.
And then the service center, ugh. We did have something weird going on with ours (it eventually got swapped out under Lemon Laws) but basically they were having to fly in engineers/techs from GM in Detroit because like the 1 mechanic at our dealer who took like 1 Volt maintenance training class … couldn’t figure anything out at all.
That was >12 years ago now. ICE dealers have had time to see this coming. They have no interest in adapting.
Hyundai Sonata. Two Hyundai dealers in town. Four more along the way until I get to a Hyundai dealer with a tech that can actually service my car three hours of driving later. But from a known brand with a local dealer they said. Service will be local they said.
In May I bought my Kia EV and had the weird experience of the dealer’s sales manager telling me pure EV FUD foolishness about range anxiety while I was signing the purchase papers.
So if you are inconvenienced by range, you come back in 3 months and trade it in for another and they make another commission.
I had them outright lie to me about range and charging time, and were confused when I corrected them lol
The last guy who sold me a car didn’t even know which company he worked for. He kept saying the car/brand of prior place he worked.
That’s funny and familiar. One salesman could tell me absolutely nothing about his EV model, but kept pushing the EV at the dealer next door.
I think the first time I ever test drive a car was about 20 years ago and it was a Kia Rio. The salesman couldn’t stop telling me how shitty some other car company’s cars were and had nothing to say about the Rio.
When I test drove my Kia Niro EV the dude couldn’t even tell us how to turn the car on or shift into drive. (step on gas pedal then press button)
I keep reflecting on how my experience was so much different than everyone else, and how lucky I got. In 2018 even and the sales dude actually knew his shit, even if he was slightly more PHEV than BEV.
I feel liked I found a damned unicorn based on the horror stories I hear regularly.
They don’t know anything about their ICE vehicles either, it’s just less obvious since they have general car knowledge.
I test drove a few in the past year, but I’m not exactly in prime EV sales territory. Every single one was at under 10% charge when I sat down.
At some places they’re still not even knowledgeable about fucking hybrids. Went with the wife a couple weeks ago to toyota to test drive a couple and the salesman that went with us couldn’t answer literally anything she asked about them, I had to do it.
It’s not hard to find the information, there’s literally entire YouTube videos dedicated to it.
They know nothing about cars. If they did, they wouldn’t be car salespeople.
I’d love to just be an EV salesman for like 4 hours a day after my normal 7-3 workday. I’d be like do you love gas stations? No? Me either. Do you have a garage or drive to a work parking lot? Yes? Well you’d be perfect for an electric car. It’s the convenience and knowledge that you’re helping reduce carbon emissions after only a few years.
Every time I’ve ever test driven a car with a salesman it’s been the dumbest experience of my life. People who clearly don’t know a damn thing about the car, and can only tell you “this thing really suits you” or something. If I ask “does it have apple CarPlay” they gotta look it up because they don’t even know. I can only imagine it’s worse for EVs.
They didn’t even know about the federal tax credit
They know nothing about gas F150s, in my experience.
FTFY.
When I bought my gas cars, they had no idea about the features of the car. Same held true for my EVs.
They’re just there to make sure you don’t run off with the car while you figure out for yourself if you like it.
They don’t even know anything about their ice vehicles… I taught so many salespeople about things they didn’t know last time I shopped because I had spent a lot of time researching that particular truck and its trims.
Kind of like that ID.4 couple I found at the only charger for miles who had arrived at 1% because the dealer didn’t tell them about ABRP
could be because abrp is garbage
What’s the better alternative for a Volkswagen?
google maps and chargehub
given the low profit and sales what did anyone expect? spending over a million dollars and agreeing to no haggle pricing when the average profit on a Mach E, it has been stated it may be lower than five percent per sale and most of that from the manufacturer.
So if they clear two to three thousand dollars on the sale of one Mach E the pay back is… well, never. I am not even counting the investment in training sales persons who may just be gone in less than a year.
Ford cannot make the vehicle at a profit so it had to extract some of the costs from the dealers. Ford has around three thousand dealers in the US and their total sales was 1.8m - which means the average is six hundred per dealer but its obvious many dealers are small town types who might do half that at best.
The numbers were never going to support a large number of dealerships going forward and we will end up seeing the smaller local stores lost to the big super stores and that may not be a desirable outcome.
Ford lost $36000.00 on every EV sold last quarter!
this puts me in a pretty small minority but I don’t actually believe the automakers when they say that they can’t make a sufficient profit on evs or that they lose money on every one they make. be it accounting tricks or outright lying, but spending billions of dollars on something that’s effectively a marketing exercise just doesn’t make any sense.
I’m not sure I understand this comment. Are you referring to the costs associated with producing the vehicles as a marketing exercise?
I think any ev from a big 3 brand (with possible exception of the bolt) isn’t actually designed to make money or develop technology and is designed as a showpiece to show consumers that they’re innovative and are in with the latest trends
Ahh I see what you’re saying.
I’d probably disagree with you just due to the significant costs associated with engineering and manufacturing a new product in general let alone a relatively new category. I will say I do feel like EV products from the big 3 sans GM were rushed so you’re probably right to some degree.
They’re not saying that. That’s how it’s being reported. What the actual manufacturers are saying is “this is new tech and all the cost is in the up front, so we’re going to lose money per car until the R&D is sufficiently amortized.” Which is then being turned into click-bait headlines of “X Manufacturer is losing $500,000 per car!”
Ford lost $36000.00 on every EV sold last quarter!
this would make sense if they were consistently communicating this exact message. but instead we get stuff like ford raising prices and justifying it by saying that they’re losing money on their evs - if losing money was both true and expected, there would be no need for them to do or say any of this.
They’re raising prices on everything, though. And just because they expect to lose money doesn’t mean they don’t want to lose less money.
huh? they recently lowered prices on the lightning by a good amount
Ford lost $36000.00 on every EV sold last quarter!
Yeah, they want to make money, not know anything.
And to stop slapping a 30-40k markup on EVs
Ford seemed like they were making competitive products for a while. Now they’ll be relegated to the dustbin of automotive history.
Ford lost $36000.00 on every EV sold last quarter!
yeah their ev efforts are, er, stuck in neutral at the moment and for the foreseeable future