What will it take to make you seriously consider an EV?

Trailers before the trailers.

 

ALRIGHT ALRIGHT GEEZ.

I will just paraphrase the headline from now on.

 

Yeah, I don't think dealerships usually make much money on a car sale, but in this market I don't know. I don't know what kind of inventory they have, but if they don't have inventory, maybe they're marking things up and people are still buying. People were paying up and beyond for your run-of-the-mill car the past couple of years during COVID and the supply chain issues.

I'm also curious as to why nobody was around for Ford. Was it invenotry-related? I mean, if they don't have inventory, I'm not sure what they'd sell. Ford really doesn't make cars outside of the Mustang, either, and maybe people are shying away from larger vehicles with gas prices the way they've been, so maybe that has something to do with it, too? Weird.

 

Wth? You'd rather do that than just post a link to an article? Damn, dude, just post the title and a link. No need to strain your brain. lol.

 

This is more a "general" car article, but it does talk about EV's and PHEV's. I'm not as concerned about the JD Power IQS too much, but you usually find the worst makers consistently at the bottom. lol. There are some other tidbits in this article that are somewhat interesting :

2022 J.D. Power Initial Quality Study: New-Vehicle Problems Hit All-Time High

 

Ford looked like they had almost no inventory on the lot. The salesperson said he can factory order an Escape for us at MSRP + about $1000 negotiable dealer add-ons. There was a Lightning there though that was waiting for a factory order customer to pickup. Though the salesperson said that the dealership was hoping that he would cancel then the dealership would be able to get a Lightning to sell.

 

Yeah, when reviewing their last earnings report, I recall someone saying they're encouraging more people to order vehicles instead of showing up to buy them. Their inventories are pretty low from what I remember hearing. I think most dealers are probably going to be like that - where they run a lot leaner than they did before the pandemic. I hope they do away with having to deal salesmen as fun as it can be sometimes (lol) but I still want to be able to test drive the vehicles. I also hope this doesn't mean I won't be able to pay $10k under sticker for most GM/Ford cars, but I'm thinking those days may be gone at least for a while.

 

Things going "on sale" is an American staple lol
Rest assured, no matter who the selling party is (dealer or manufacturer), incentives and sales will happen. Eventually.

TSLA doesn't need to right now because demand > supply. But I don't think other manufacturers will that kind of cult like following to get the average joe to pay MSRP.

 

Hopefully "deals" come back by the time we want to buy our next vehicle. My wife's Outback will roll over 100K miles soon. Not a big issue, except the three kids in the backseat keep growing and we'd like to get a 3 row SUV or minivan for road trips and general bussing from place to place. I'd like to look into a PHEV if the price is right (used or new). Doesn't seem like an electric vehicle will be in our price range anytime soon.
It's tough to imagine I bought my 2019 F150 brand new for $37.4K out the door. It's just an XLT, so no leather or anything, but still. Prices these days seem insane. I just looked at Texas Direct Auto and a used version (except year older with slightly more miles is listed at $39K and some change. It's wild.

 

People stopped gaf during the pandemic

 

Nah you still need vehicles on the lot. A lot of selling is the instant gratification of driving the car off the lot. The conversion rate on sales is way lower on cars that need to be ordered versus cars on the lot.

Plus you're competing with used cars that are available on a lot by default (with the exception of the online sellers like Carvana). So unless we're talking about cars where demand greatly outstrips supply, cars will have to come back to the lot. The whole dealership model doesn't really survive without it.

 

Placed a deposit on a Sportage X-Line PHEV today!

Wife and I test drove an Escape (gas) yesterday and another Sportage (gas) yesterday. The Sportage was just miles better than the Escape in terms of interior quality and quietness of the cabin. The Sportage actually feels like the future while the Escape just feels like her current 2013 Escape, just more fuel efficient. So she gave me the her stamp of approval to order the Sportage PHEV.

Called 5 dealerships today. Two of them (Fredy, Ford Bend,) won't take deposits. They took down my name and desired trim and said they'll call me back when they actually get allotment. Two of the dealerships have massive markups. Westside's markup is about $10k and Archer is about $7k.

I ended up putting down a $1,000 refundable deposit with Beck & Masten Kia in Tomball. They required a $1,000 dealer add-on that included anti-theft gps (Safepoint), window tint, Clear Shield (some kind of paint protection), and wheel locks. Wish there wasn't a dealer add-on, but $1,000 isn't too bad and some of the items do have some value. Doc fee of $150 is also not outrageous. Supposedly I am the second person who had put down a deposit there, but they still don't know how long it'll be until the car arrives.

Beck and Masten did require me to go in person to put down the deposit. It's probably there to weed out the out of towners.

 

Can EV's do burnouts? I'd love to do a 6th Street Bridge takeover.....

 

how much was it? did you try the sorento?

 

MSRP is $40k. OTD is $44k with fees and TTL.

We didn't try the Sorento. Sportage is the right size for us. We thought the Sorento would be too big.

 

Going back to this, I just saw Ford CEO Jim Farley today saying pretty much everything is "sold out" and a lot of it has to do with the supply issues the way he was talking. If you want the Ford Lightnings, there's probably a 1.5-2 year wait according to him. I just casually looked for Mustangs at about 4 or 5 Ford Autonation dealerships in the DFW area and they had a total of 1 Mustang if I did the search correctly. Another dealership had 2. I saw another dealership with 1 Maverick. Yeah... they're having inventory/supply issues. lol.

 

Hauled 14,000 lbs of loaded trailer the other day.

So I'm waiting on an EV that can do that. And get back home on a single charge.

 

There is a lot of indication that EV credits will change with a new reconciliation bill. There is now an income cap as well as vehicle price cap. Used EVs will also get some credit. It is still unclear on exact timing of when this will into effect (if it passes the senate parlimentarian) and how/if it's retroactive at all.

Bill is here, page 366. Here's a reddit discussion on it. Reuter article

The biggest impact would be lifting of the 200k vehicle cap per manufacturer, the rebate being able to be deducted at point of sale, and the rebate amount being dependent on where the vehicle was assembled and origin of the battery.

This is huge for GM, Tesla, Toyota, and Ford who were already over the 200k vehicle cap or extremely close to it.

If the Bolt/Bolt EUV can qualify for the $7k rebate, then that makes the vehicle a ridiculous value unless dealerships mark up the price $7k which entirely possible.

EDIT: If this passes, Hyundai and Kia would be big losers since they wouldn't qualify any more since most (all?) of their EV and PHEV are not assembled in North America. I hope I get my Sportage PHEV delivered before 2023...

 

Yeah, it ended up being North America instead of America, and for that, Canada thanks Joe Manchin.

 

Ford also lucked out with the assembled in Mexico Mach-E.

I also spoke too soon about Toyota being a beneficiary. I don't think Toyota assembles any plug in or fuel cell vehicles in North America. It's all made in Japan.