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.
Many states actually have laws that ban Tesla from selling directly. More have laws limiting the number of stores that a manufacturer can have.
Only 14 allow unrestricted direct sales, and many of them only apply to companies that either don’t already have franchise agreements or only sell EVs.
Manufacturers would LOVE to cut out the middlemen and sell direct today.
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
Many states actually have laws that ban Tesla from selling directly. More have laws limiting the number of stores that a manufacturer can have.
Only 14 allow unrestricted direct sales, and many of them only apply to companies that either don’t already have franchise agreements or only sell EVs.
Manufacturers would LOVE to cut out the middlemen and sell direct today.