Most USA dealers don't like selling EVs

[Danface]

OR change they're willinginess to deal with it all together. Look, charging is pain in the butt in comparsion to using gasoline no matter how you slice it. Hybrids make more sense then BEV's but I still wouldn't trade my truck in. As early adopters we knew the challenges and took them as such but the "average" Joe or Jane just wants to get from point A to point B without a lot of "challenges". So "party on" fellow explorers!

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[F150ROD]

Just remember, unless anything has changed, they make $10k off each Lightning sold …..

 

[Joe Dablock]

The other thing is going to be service. If all vehicles were EV, their service bays would be empty. My MME at 50k has never been back to a dealer, and my Lightning at 20k Will hopefully be same!

my goal is 200k, 2 sets of tires and 1 set of brake pads! But the other side is when they do brake, it will probably be expensive!

 

[chl]

I wonder if this is the issue I'm having. I've reached out to multiple dealers and I barely get any reply. Last two vehicles I bought new (2015, 2020) I was able to get quite a lot of work done via email. Now it's just asking for my phone number, which I reply that I don't wish to share that right now, then it's automated emails. I thought it was just the Ford system that seems to be implemented at each dealer. Maybe it's because I'm looking for a Lightning....

I did a search with and found quite a few dealership within 300 miles of me back in the Fall of 2023, and they all replied and were anxious to sell me their trucks.

There were some that didn't have mark-ups, but none with discounts.
It may have been cars.com I used-not sure.

I wanted to wait until Jan 2024 to get the upfront tax credit anyway, and I was looking for a Pro with the max tow and ProPower 9.6kW.

Glad I waited because in Dec. I found a dealership within 50 miles who had what I wanted AND was discounting their inventory of EVs as well.

I did most of it through emails, even the deposit and credit checks.

I'm in Virginia just outside of Washington DC.

Some of the dealerships were willing and able to drive the vehicle to me.

 

[chl]

Sort of the opposite for me. In May I went to several dealers and made several calls to dealers looking for a 2023 pro in stock with certain required options. Several kept calling and emailing weeks after I had already purchased my pro.
In fact my email gets a daily update from carguru about local lightnings for sale with pricing and pricing history.
Rick

I had the same experience.

 

[Joe.....Montana]

Dealerships work best when they have the product on the lot, ready to go and can close the deal that day. Why would a salesman spend energy with a customer when they don't have the ability to make the sale and know that when the person walks out that door, they are more likely to buy from some other dealership with the vehicle they want in stock. Best case, maybe the customer eventually buys after a bunch of work to locate the vehicle they want and making a trade/shipping. etc.

So they would need a critical mass of EVs with a variety of trim levels and options and colors. Which they don't have.

This is exactly how we purchased our truck. Went to the local dealership to test drive the pickup and get an actual feel for the truck (after tons of research). Unfortunately they only had an ER in Platinum and Lariat (without the pano moon roof the MRS had to have)...found the exact Lariat (ER, max tow, and moon roof) at a dealership 300 miles away with an even larger discount. The dealership was also a salaried employee place. Sent in all our information. Drove over, gave the truck the once over and we were gone within 45 minutes.

 

[chl]

My 2012 Leaf bought in Dec 2011 has never had a single problem requiring a trip to the dealer for service.

To keep the battery warranty active I had to have yearly battery checkups for 8 years, but after 6 years with no problems I skipped the last two - they didn't even charge me for the check a couple of times.

It still has 10 out of 12 bars capacity which is about 78%. Gives me about 80 miles range local driving, no A/C no highway, no peeling rubber.

They had 2 recalls, one to add more shielding under the car for the battery and another was a software update related to an issue where if the Leaf was charging using a GE Watt Station during a thunderstorm there was a chance there would be a glitch that would harm the on-board charging circuitry. I had a GE Watt Station but never had the problem - I unplug everything sensitive whenever there is a thunderstorm nearby anyway.

Neither recall required more than dropping it off and picking it up the same day.

No OTA updates in those days.

Anyway, I am hoping the Lightning does as well.

So far the only issues I've had were:
1) getting an update - apparently my 12v battery was too low so I had to plug the truck in overnight with it on to beef up the LV battery SOC;
2) the stupid FCSP install software took a while to work through, hours of frustration;
3) one super-hot day (over 100F) parked in a parking lot out in the open for 1/2 hour, started up and turned on the MAX A/C and got a whiff of coolant and no cool air - I believe it was an intermittent coolant leak from the cabin compressor due to the heat - hasn't happened again.
4) customer service - they mean well, but they don't seem to have solutions that work for the imperfect software for the FCSP/FordPass and the update issue - they did tell me the cryptic message I got "update was interrupted" meant the LV battery was too low, which helped, but the driving for 1/2 to 1 hour to charge it up didn't work.

Fingers crossed!

 

[chl]

I read somewhere or maybe it was a youtube video, that at first the dealerships to be EV certified had to invest over $1 million, but they dropped the requirement at some point.

Fast DC charging does require a significant investment - those suckers can be expensive - then there is the beefing up some dealerships might have had to do with the utility.

I use time of day and charge exclusively at home for 4.8 cents per kWh after 1 am to 5 am.
Barely makes a dent in my electric bill.

The infrastructure upgrades out on the highway are pricey, but Congress is paying for most of it (with tax dollars).

In some places the "grid" can barely handle summer and some utilities are worse than others.

But more solar energy falls on earth in one day than we could ever use if converted to electricity using the current PV technology.

"A total of 173,000 terawatts (trillions of watts) of solar energy strikes the Earth continuously. That's more than 10,000 times the world's total energy use. And that energy is completely renewable — at least, for the lifetime of the sun. "It's finite, but we're talking billions of years," Taylor says. ... Solar thermal systems covering 10 percent of the world's deserts — about 1.5 percent of the planet's total land area — could generate about 15 terawatts of energy, given a total efficiency of 2 percent. This amount is roughly equal to the projected growth in worldwide energy demand over the next half-century..."

[Note that was from 2011 - solar cell efficiency is much better that 2 percent now: " In 2024, the average efficiency is about 21.4%..."]

So there is plenty of energy out there for the grid to use for EVs and more, just need to harvest it.

Building out takes time and money, but it is happening.

If a good percentage of people can install solar on their roofs, it will make a big difference in what the utilities and govt's have to invest in plants.

 

[chl]

That's terrible! I didn't know Tesla's were so problematic.

I just searched it and see there are quite a few model S owners with a lot of expensive repiars.
But the web sites that supposedly give objective data seem to grossly underestimate the maintenance and repair costs.

Caveat emptor!

 

[Scorpio3d]

Same
Well, at least I think it will be. I just had my solar installed a little over a month ago.

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