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.
All part of a petroleum-based economy.
Not to mention coke isn’t exactly cheap when it’s not served in a bottle or a glass.
Right? And if the coke dealers go, there go the exotic cat dealers too.
Because dealers have lobbied to have the law mandate them.
I know “deregulation” is a bit of a dirty word, but some regulations are genuinely bad. In this case, it’s literal textbook rent seeking, in the economics sense.
I’d like to be able to order a vehicle off Amazon and have it delivered. That really isn’t so crazy.
Yes, especially since they don’t have to be fitted like clothes or shoes. It’s off-the-shelf anyways.
That’s the one thing where I agree with Musk, they’re not necessary.
I don’t want amazon involved in anything, but I’ve bought a car off the internet before and had it delivered. I only had to to go anywhere to do the wire transfer at my bank.
Carvana actually works pretty well this way.
I remember coming across an article on amazon planning to start selling Hyundai cars online. This is the one https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/company-news/amazon-hyundai-partnership
Cannot you buy Hyundai through Amazon?
Apparently you can order it but you still have to go to a dealer to settle the deal and pick it up. So, lame.
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Every dealership in my area has their markup at least the amount of the tax credit. More than a few have exactly the tax credit. Tax credits are supposed to help steer the market, they’re not a handout to pointless middleman.
Markups are super annoying, but identify them quickly and call out the dealer ASAP when looking at new cars. Literally call them out, to their face, and say “No”. Don’t let them use pointless markups in price negotiations! What I do is find the average price of the car across multiple dealers, subtract all stupid markups, delete the cost of dealer added “upgrades” subtract a few thousand and work from there. There is not much wiggle room for brand new cars, so don’t expect to get a deal of the century. Used cars are a totally different beast, but you can basically ignore markups as well.
Provided that your local dealers aren’t affiliated in some way, play the long game and play them against each other in a mini-price war. Stupid markups will generally evaporate naturally in that case.
(LPT: Do not sign anything but the actual loan paperwork or contract to buy the car. This will piss off a sales person to no end, but they will get over it. I can go into details why, but I am already outside the scope of this thread.)
A short anecdote to emphasize the wiggle room on used cars:
I briefly worked at a car dealership. A guy traded an old Acura RSX, maybe about fifteen years old. We gave him $500 for it and sold it two days later for $8000.
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So many reasons, but this one is high on the list.
And this is why a lot of us prefer Tesla’s approach. While there were still things I didn’t like about the process, it was much more straightforward and easy. No markups, no worry about getting ripped off, no having to “get up and walk away”, no dealing with stupid tricks like “I’ll go to bat with my manager for you”. I just bought the car … and Tesla has lowered prices this year, combinEd with state and federal rebates, the price isn’t bad
Remember to walk away when they don’t budge. Sometimes they will stop you from leaving and you might still get a good deal.
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
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For real, I just had a transmission eat all my money. A transmission! Thats what we’re dealing with and they’re wondering why we aren’t scrambling to pay tens of thousands. We simply do not have it. Also my landlord increased my rent at the same time. This place works for no one but the already rich.
It doesn’t sound like you were going to buy a new car of any kind.
Their argument supposedly isn’t that people aren’t buying new cars, but that they’re buying EVs at a slower rate.
I’d buy an EV if I could afford one. Shit, when that transmission went out it would have been a good time to consider. But not with the price tags on everything and my 2004 wages.
The average new car in 2023 was like $47,000, would you have bought a new car at all?
Well, you see, you don’t have to pay the entirety of the 47k right away. I have no idea why but they said I couldn’t make payments on the transmission when I asked in person.
While I agree that EVs are too expensive, it just sounds like you’re making the argument that you can’t buy any new car. Which is also fair but different.
Thats true, too. I can’t afford shit.
You will own nothing and be happy. Google that and you understand.
There is no lack of understanding here. But thats not the goal. There is no unified goal. We live in the era of a thousand fiefdoms, all allowed to own an exchange and partially own each other’s serfs. It is the endless gnawing masses. The sweet older couple down the street is just as guilty of the C Suite for profit motives, as their retirement depends on the stock market. A vicious, self-defeating cycle straight into the Garbage Wastes of Tomorrow.
The world economic forum has less actual power than the city counsel of buffalo New York. They aren’t the Illuminati they’re a bunch of jackasses trying to make an economic system that eats itself whenever it’s put in a position where it can sustainable without saying no to eating itself.
BEVs are fundamentally more expensive than conventional cars. That is the real problem here. Blaming the dealers won’t change that.
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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?
Not many quality ICE vehicles come at that price point these days.
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.
This is the exact reason everyone across the globe exclusively use horses for transportation. Replacing them with these horseless carriages would destroy the shoeing business, where would we put all of the feed?.. What is Biden thinking?!
Exactly, I don’t want a car, I just want a faster horse!
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
How about you and the manufacturers sell them cheaper, and now here me out. Maybe then, and I know this is a crazy idea. But could we make it so that the already rich multi million dollar owners earned less?
Nah, wouldn’t want that. I’m sure VW and the gang need the money.
We have no money and everything is more expensive.
if only EVs remain, there won’t be any problem selling.
Unless those EVs start at $50,000. Then they’re gonna be hard to move no matter what.
I hope these prices can’t help move to public transit. I hate vehicle maintenance and insurance.
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!
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Biden: Sounds like a you problem.
Huge discounts on EVs? I really need to get out and see this!
While in Canada there is 12-24 months wait time for an EV…
Is that because they just aren’t making them because no one can afford them?
I just paid $18,000 for an 8 year old base model Jeep Patriot with 210K.
Car market is fucked.
The wait time is because there is too much demand and not enough supply. Some people are selling their “waiting list place” for like $2000…
And yes car market is fucked, new or used. I have a 10yo car and couldn’t afford a new one in case of total or something :-/
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.
BEV/Hybrids have been around a while, there’s places you can buy individual cells when they die and it’s pretty easy to replace them. As time goes by, it should become no harder than going to the auto parts store like we do with regular ICEs. Unless they do shady stuff like making the batteries OEM only, like how Apple do with their batteries.
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.
You definitely can. It’s been a thing with hybrids for 20+ years.
