As news started coming out about electric cars in early 2016, Michael Young, a self-described “car guy,” knew he wanted to try one. One afternoon, he strolled into his local dealership and asked to test drive the BMW i3, a small, sporty car with a range of up to 150 miles. The salesperson stopped him. “You can’t drive that car on the highway,” Young recalls the salesperson saying, explaining that the car couldn’t go over 45 miles per hour.
“I was kind of dumbfounded by that,” Young said.
Young knew it could go much faster — and, after convincing the salesperson to let him go on a test drive, ultimately bought the i3.
[…]
James Richards, the CEO of a water heating company in Davis, Calif., spent days test-driving EVs at Volkswagen, Tesla, Chevy and Ford. But the 40-year-old found the dealership experience “cringeworthy” — the dealers didn’t seem to know much about the EVs they were selling. “I felt like I knew more than they did,” Richards said.
This just in: Old Boys Club doesn’t want to learn new technology, and would rather lie about new technology so they can keep hawking the same bullshit they’ve scammed decades of Americans into buying.
Seriously, that’s not just that they don’t know and don’t care to know, that’s straight up “we don’t care about this newfangled technology so much that we’re literally going to fucking gaslight you about it in hopes you don’t know enough to know better.”
I guess it’s not that far removed from the lies car dealers usually tell, but I mean, god damn fucking just gaslighting customers.
Fuck Dealerships. As much as Tesla sucks because of Elon Musk, I do hope their plan to sell cars directly to consumers pans out and other car makers start following suit as opposed to keeping these fucking grifting ass middle men in the game.
I figure it has more to do with the fact that the ICE car comes with a lifetime of engine and other maintenance that the dealership is looking to cash in on long after the warranty is expired. Even within the warranty, EVs don’t need oil changes. Just brakes and tires, which are done much less frequently. And after the warranty, it’s a long list of minor repairs to engine components, not to mention supporting all the emission control stuff. It’s a gravy train and they don’t want to get off.
That’s a good point. They make their money on service not sales
When ID.4 came out in the US in 2021, VW had a decent buying experience modeled (presumably) after Tesla and Europe. You could go to a dealership to test drive, then order your desired configuration online for a guaranteed sale price. Sure there were some glitches and it took awhile for them to deliver, but fundamentally it was a great buying experience for me. We went to pick up the car, the dealer only tried minimally to upsell warranties, and we were out the door in 30 minutes. Of course, we can’t have nice things so VW is back to the old “dealership fucks with you” model now.
For all the shit that the company has done, Tesla’s refusal to sell through stealerships and setting a precedent for direct-to-consumer auto sales almost makes up for everything in my eyes.
Removed by mod
Of course they are. They lose service and part revenue every time someone switches to emob.
Interesting. CleanTechnica just posted a very similar article yesterday.
“Many GM dealers have elected to take a buyout from the company rather than make the switch. Some Ford dealers are suing to prevent its electric car mandates from taking effect.”
so it’s not merely laziness or ignorance of individual people - this is choosing not to sell EVs at management/ownership level.
This isn’t even the full news article. The actual news article is on Washington Post, and they charge a subscription fee. Your post fucking sucks, OP
As I explained elsewhere, people don’t like paywalls, so I posted this one. Chill out dude
