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.
Not to mention coke isn’t exactly cheap when it’s not served in a bottle or a glass.
I know Lemmy hates Tesla, but not having to deal with a dealership was one of the primary decision points for me.
I’d like to be able to order a vehicle off Amazon and have it delivered. That really isn’t so crazy.
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
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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?
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
