Car Dealerships & Electric Vehicles

[Alpha8472]

Customers views on electric vehicles is not changing much even due to high gas prices.

Customers still view EVs with suspicion about reliability. The car Dealerships are still selling gas cars most of the time.

https://www.csnews.com/higher-gas-price ... needle-evs

[babs]

Customers views on electric vehicles is not changing much even due to high gas prices.

Customers still view EVs with suspicion about reliability. The car Dealerships are still selling gas cars most of the time.

https://www.csnews.com/higher-gas-price ... needle-evs

Tesla sells ove a million cars a year. Kia/Hyundai are doing well with electrics. The others don't have a competitive product yet or are supply constrained. I'm not sure ould say customers view them with suspicion, rather it's still very early in the world of electrics.

[jamcool]

Whatever happened to bio-fuels?

[Brian Lutz]

The Volkswagen Dieselgate scandal seems to have pretty much killed consumer diesel vehicles in the US (at least in the small car space.) I suspect the long term preference shift toward larger SUVs (even in spite of gas prices) probably isn't helping matters any either. E85 isn't widely available in this part of the country (some performance shops will sell it in cans though since some high performance cars use it to increase combustion for more horsepower at the cost of much higher fuel consumption) so I don't know how common that is. Although there are efforts to "push" EVs, ultimately it seems like a lot of policymakers would much rather make everyone use mass transit instead.

[storewanderer]

More and more issues with electrics that need to be resolved. Charging needs to be sped up and become more reliable. Insurance costs are another big question. Battery disposal. What happens when the car gets into an accident. MANY unanswered questions. And I am afraid the folks pushing this stuff don't even know the answers.

And that doesn't even touch the "grid" topic.

[veteran+]

The biggest problem is infrastructure (charging stations).

There are not even close to enough stations to provide any sense of confidence to the public.

I know many people (including myself) that would buy an EV if the infrastructure were there.

I would stick with a GM or Ford or even a Volvo but NEVER Tesla.

The others like Rivian are very unstable companies.

[storewanderer]

The biggest problem is infrastructure (charging stations).

There are not even close to enough stations to provide any sense of confidence to the public.

I know many people (including myself) that would buy an EV if the infrastructure were there.

I would stick with a GM or Ford or even a Volvo but NEVER Tesla.

The others like Rivian are very unstable companies.

Well the thing is, Tesla has the largest marketshare. The management and founder of Tesla drive Teslas. We are aware of some things about those vehicles which may sway a purchase decision and reliability is known at this point. We know the batteries for Tesla are largely Panasonic and that is a company with a tract record of quality.

The politicians pushing EVs do they even drive an EV? I imagine some do and it's mostly Teslas.

GM and Ford, what marketshare in EVs do they have at present? Do the executives of these companies even drive the EVs they produce or will supposedly eventually produce?

Also we won't get into the way plants for dino gas vehicles are closing and union members who worked at said plants for decades laid off and while new EV plants of GM and Ford are opening that will be union, that is all new employees.

Where I am going is we have no clue how EVs from GM and Ford will be or how reliable they will be, and we won't know until they market them for a while.

[veteran+]

I am not conerned about market share. That would not influence me to purchase a Tesla. There are myriad under reported problems with Teslas. And frankly, who cares if the E Suite is driving their own manufactured cars? Is that supposed to convince me to buy their product?

Regardless of who is producing EVs.........................the infrastructure is the key, and it's just not there yet to convince the majority of buyers to buy electric.

[buckguy]

Depending on where you live bio-fuels are still with us and have been experiencing small increases in use.

The infrastructure is growing----new parking garages seem to have charging stations. Condo/Co-op complexes with existing parking facilities put the responsibility for installing charging on car owners, but the cost of charging usually is borne by the complex. Adding small numbers of electric cars hasn't made a big difference in my complex's electric bill.

Sheetz has opened charging stations and have been doing it places that aren't exactly likely to be hotbeds of EVs like Central PA---I would imagine that competitors will follow. It probably helps that gas is not their original business and is a low margin driver of traffic into their stores---it's probably easier to adopt something new if it isn't a threat to your original business or main source of gross profit margins. If anything, their model of c-store as sandwich shop probably benefits from people having time to kill while they charge.

GM and Ford were cutting old capacity long before committing to EVs.

[Super S]

The Volkswagen Dieselgate scandal seems to have pretty much killed consumer diesel vehicles in the US (at least in the small car space.) I suspect the long term preference shift toward larger SUVs (even in spite of gas prices) probably isn't helping matters any either. E85 isn't widely available in this part of the country (some performance shops will sell it in cans though since some high performance cars use it to increase combustion for more horsepower at the cost of much higher fuel consumption) so I don't know how common that is. Although there are efforts to "push" EVs, ultimately it seems like a lot of policymakers would much rather make everyone use mass transit instead.

Dieselgate more or less finished it off. Interest in diesels fell off by the early 1980s thanks to the GM diesels which were derived from gasoline engine designs which had many problems. A lot of manufacturers, both domestic and import, were actually offering diesels in passenger cars in the early 1980s, but the issues with GM convinced many people that ALL diesel cars were unreliable and most were gone by the mid 1980s, but VW held out. Some diesels came back in recent years but sales were low.

The biggest problem is infrastructure (charging stations).

There are not even close to enough stations to provide any sense of confidence to the public.

I know many people (including myself) that would buy an EV if the infrastructure were there.

I would stick with a GM or Ford or even a Volvo but NEVER Tesla.

The others like Rivian are very unstable companies.

EVs are a hard sell to those in remote areas and are not ideal for those situations, and situations like mountain driving and extreme temperatures are going to limit the range of EVs.

As for retail effects, some states are mandating EVs only for new vehicles in the not too distant future. I expect that auto parts stores will see some strong sales for a while as people keep existing vehicles longer as they may not have the option to buy traditional new vehicles, but if sales of EVs do take off, many of the parts stores catering mainly to DIY will be in trouble. DIY seems to be falling off a bit as vehicles become more complex and some vehicles do not retain value. Sometimes it's hard to justify a sensor or some other item that can cost several hundred dollars to fix. Dealerships mainly serve vehicles that are under warranty or relatively new designs which have limited support in the aftermarket, but many turn away from dealer parts and service as warranties expire as pricing is high in most cases.