Don't bet on markups staying for the long term. Everything comes back to normal eventually. Maybe another year for certain models. Many have already gone away.

 

What are they going there for then? The post I was replying to with my silly reply was suggesting to raise the price high enough and loose 50% of the customers. Where do they go? What were they doing there in the first place....lol

 

Local high volume dealer contacted yesterday to inquire if I was still interested in the Bolt EUV. He has a black Premier Redline with sun & sound plus super cruise coming to the dealership. Everything sounded good. Car was not spoken for. Estimated arrival in 2 months. If I ordered now, wait time 4 months to one year. Then he dropped the bomb. $5,000 market adjustment. Told him I was surprised since Tesla had big price cut, ID4 selling at MSRP or slightly below and KIA/Hyundai selling below MSRP. He responded that demand was up and supply constricted so price was adjusted appropriately. Told him to pound sand since he was in M3 pricing territory. I really hate the dealers! There is something to admire with Tesla sales model. GM being GM again…….

 

I really hate the dealers! There is something to admire with Tesla sales model. GM being GM again…….

It was simply an offer made to you. You didn't like it and refused it, good for you.
The dealers are just business people trying to maximize their profit, if people weren't paying over MSRP then the dealers wouldn't keep continuing to ask for it. Things will cool off soon enough.
Not sure what is to admire about Tesla....they too set the prices to whatever the market will bear, it just isn't being shown to you as MSRP plus an adjustment.
Their recent reduction in prices might be a marketing gimmick, it might also be a sign of weakening sales etc. Who knows?
The Bolt may also follow suit but too soon to say.

 

To be fair to GM, dealers aren't a part of GM, they operate independently.

 

If demand is so high why are they contacting you? Vehicle should already be sold.... their just vultures looking for the kill.

 

Wait a minute, Teslas have always been overpriced.

 

It's just a shady dealer trying to make a quick buck by hoping you are gullible enough to pay over MSRP. GM doesn't want this to happen because it looks bad on them and they have no control over it.

 

I simply do not understand GM.

My son who drives a Bolt LT 2020 all the time in NC, just yesterday bought a loaded new Tesla Y.
Instead of the 77K that people recently paid, his total to his door was 57K.

Am not here to push Tesla (especially since I still own that NC Bolt). But that Y is a real road car
with an established working network that communicates to the specific car, driver, speed, et al...
and times the 20 minute charges for thousands of highway miles. Have done it seamlessly myself.

The Bolt, the upcoming Equinox, Blazer, etc. are all fine EV.

But GM is going to have to get competitive and make pricing something
that the consumer can halfway believe and then stick with it for more than a few days at a time.

 

There are way more EVs (available right now and above 200 miles range) that compete (worldwide) at 57K$ than there are at 30K$. To name just a few:

around 30K$:
MG4, MG5, ZS, ID.3, Born, Leaf e+, Zoe E-Tech, Niro EV, Kona electric...

around 57K$:
ID.3, ID.4, ID.5, Niro EV, Kona electric, Atto 3, Megane E-Tech, Born, E-Soul, Enyaq iV60, Enyaq iV80, Marvel R, U6, XC40 Recharge, C40 Recharge, Polestar 2, Ioniq 5, EV6, Mustang Mach-E, BZ4X, Ariya, Solterra, EQA 250, EQB 250, Q4 E-Tron 40 & 45 & 50, i4 eDrive35, iX1 eDrive30...

 

More and more dealerships will be going to the Tesla way of doing things. Vehicles will be ordered online with transparent pricing, and you'll go to the dealership to pick it up.
More and more manufacturers (especially in the EV space) are starting to require the dealerships advertise fixed pricing.

The days of the shady car dealerships are numbered.

 

I just bought at MSRP on Monday.

 

Just ordered (last week) an EUV Premier with Sun and Sound from a dealer in Charlotte, NC. Dealer adds an administrative fee to the purchase of all vehicles (pure rip off what can you do?) and some options they also add to all vehicles. Total above MSRP with these add on is about $1700. Dealer insists this will be the price and there will not be any additional fees. Estimate: 12-16 weeks but we'll see. Dealer is a larger, urban dealer with larger allocations so there is some hope that it will come in the time frame. Dealer admits that even they are somewhat confused about allocation process. My home solar power system and inverter already has an EV charger so I'm ready to go. Will be selling my 2010 Prius: great car, the absolutely most trouble free car I have ever owned but it's time to go all in on EVs. I must admit that not having to negotiate and haggle and deal with all the usual games that salespeople play made it a much more pleasant and stress free process. Not that I would not have haggled and played their stupid games if the market allowed me to do us. But it doesn't.

 

My 2 cents is we're still just coming out from the chip shortage and covid supply issues that limited most new car production and used car prices skyrocketed. Some EVs are limited, not sure if battery supply issues. Bolt specifically is rumored to be going away due to name issues with early fire problems with the batteries, so not sure if GM is limiting production as part of phasing it out and getting ready for the Equinox.

Last March helped my son get his 1st car, an Impreza, dealership was not adding "market adjustment" but there was no haggling (which I enjoy). Another dealership was adding $6K markup because they could.
But that same family of dealerships, where I test drove a Bolt, was adding 1.5K markups.

I put a deposit on a Bolt that had no markup in December, they added a markup right afterwards, but my salesman got them to drop the markup since it wasn't there when I gave my deposit. Still paid MSRP, but got exactly what I wanted.

I saw an article online saying EVs were "ruining" the dealership as we know it .. time will tell but my guess fwiw is we will eventually work our way back to how things were ..

 

We can blame dealers all we want but the price is what the market will bear. As long as you have folks who are OK paying the markup then it will be there.
Up until a few months ago we had the same thing going on here in the housing market....over bidding by $100K was the minimum to even have a chance at scoring the deal. Fast forward to now and there is no over bidding and the overall prices are off 25% or more from last year.
Cars are just a smaller ticket item but it will hit there too soon and things will cool off a bit.

 

The American manufacturer/dealership model has been decades in the making based on American market characteristics. Dealerships do more than just try to extort money from their customers.

- Dealerships offer to “scratch” American consumers’ itch for immediate gratification and impulse buying... and as long as people are willing to pay for this service, it is hard to see how this part of the current market model is going to change much.

- Dealers are franchises that purchase the vehicles from the manufacturers. So, the manufacturers get to record a sale when the vehicle is purchased by the dealer instead of when it is eventually delivered to a retail customer. Everybody in the profit chain wants the dealer to sell the unit to a retail customer, but there are new vehicles that find their way from dealerships to auto auctions when they go unsold—this is a risk the dealer accepts when it purchases the unit from the manufacturer.
-- Then the dealers turn the tables on the manufacturers regarding financial risk when they get the customer to finance a unit from their lot with the manufacturer’s financing. So, it makes sense that manufacturers would like to have more control over details of these transactions.

- Dealers provide an “inventory buffer” to the manufacturers in the form of product sitting on their lots and consuming their capital in the form of financing costs while it sits there. This buffer is also important to support the manufacturers’ economy-of-scale processes with constant factory workflow at maximum output instead of the fits-and-starts that only filling direct-consumer orders may cause.

- Dealers know their local markets and this relieves the manufacturers of the marketing burden (what to order, how to promote it, etc.) at the local level.

- Dealers offer a lot of point-of-delivery services as well as local warranty work that are important to the customer experience and these can be challenging to deliver with the Tesla/Rivian direct-sales model.

I would contend that dealers should give buyers a “risk aversion rebate" for ordering cars, waiting for them to be built/delivered, and then taking immediate delivery…because these are basically pass-through transactions for dealers…instead of expecting a customer to go through these machinations for the same price as buying a model from their lot. Yes; people could cancel their order and stick the dealer with it and the dealer is always looking for ways to subsidize the financing costs of the cars on their lot so I suspect my suggestion would not be met with any fanfare at dealerships.

I read several articles about Ford’s CEO initiatives to only sell online and I am just not sure how many Americans will be willing to go through the machinations and wait times involved with that model—I suppose Ford could build stores of inventory around the country to reduce delivery times, but then they would be assuming the inventory costs and risks of these vehicles that are currently absorbed by their dealership franchises.

Tesla managed to do well with the direct-sales model, but their network of chargers directly addresses one of the biggest complaints associated with EVs: how far will my vehicle go when fully fueled; how long will it take to refuel; and how many places are available for me to refuel? Yes, these refueling benefits come at a premium for Tesla drivers, but Tesla sold a boatload of units thanks to this strategy! And, let’s not forget that Tesla does not have the massive network of franchised dealerships whose business model depends so heavily on them that would not be happy about changes.

It will be interesting to see what happens with the auto sales process because it will require a lot of behind-the-curtain changes and I am not sure all stakeholders would be happy about them.

 

Just a few days after I placed my Bolt order last week, I received a voice mail from a local Subaru dealer. When Subaru put their Solterra reservation system online next year, I missed their original window but went on their wait list. The dealer said a Solterra had come in but the person who had ordered it had backed out and he was wondering whether I was interested. I never responded, have no idea what trim level it was, what the price was, and whether there was an dealer markup. Interesting situation though. If he had called just a week before, I might have explored the situation. I've owned multiple Subarus in my life (as well as multiple Toyotas: their bZ4X shared a platform with the Solterra). My "go to" car has always been a Toyota. But, since our Bolt, whenever it arrives, will be our second car, "our around town car" (we also have a bigger, more comfortable "long-distance" traveling car), the Bolt is more at my price point for a second car. So I'll stay with the Bolt.

 

Yeah Solterras and bZ4Xs are terrible values right now. They cost around the same as the Model 3 but don't have any tax credit eligibility. I'm wondering if they'll be lowering prices soon, or at least offering big discounts.

 

The Tesla adm went right to elons pocket. The price drop is just the adm going away.

 

The Tesla model 3/Y has to be the ugliest car I've ever seen. When it was new and unique, that was one thing. Now that they are pervasive they are simply ugly.

 

OT, but that's how we roll here. JMHO, but to my eye, the paint color makes more difference in how I perceive the smaller Teslas than any car ever. To me, the Model Y in white looks like a beached orca. In red or blue, I could live with one. Same to a lesser degree with the Model 3. In dark blue or gray, it's OK, but in white, no thank you. YMMV.

jack vines

 

They can't even raffle a Tesla away anymore:

The organizer of an annual charity raffle to win a Tesla says he's struggling to sell tickets this year because of Elon Musk's antics

Climate XChange's annual Tesla raffle sold out the past three years, but in 2023, just a third of the tickets have sold, its organizer told Insider.

www.businessinsider.com

 

I was just lazily looking at used car prices near me. I actually found two Toyota RAV4 Prime XSE models at a local Toyota dealer. They must have bought them from an Oregon dealer, as one only had a few hundred miles and the other was only 3000. Neither have the Tech package, which adds the 6.6kW charger and a few other things. This flipping dealer is asking for $67000 for them, more than $20k higher than their MSRP. I can't believe they would stoop so low. They must not have paid attention to all the layoffs being announced by our local tech industries (Microsoft, Amazon, Spotify, and more).

 

…. This flipping dealer is asking for $67000 for them, more than $20k higher than their MSRP. I can't believe they would stoop so low.

Asking $20K over retail, should use terms other than “stoop so low”. I never BOUGHT a NEW car for $20K.

 

Am I the only one who thinks GM is intentionally throttling supply because they realized they set the MSRP too low? The dealer markups show the car is simply worth more than current MSRP to consumers. Maybe GM just doesn't want to sell very many at the current MSRP!

 

So you are saying the factories are not being run at full capacity? Not sure how many businesses would intentionally idle their plants to artificially reduce supply except fossil fuel companies that do not explore their existing leases and pretend that the government is keeping them from drilling. LOL

 

Looks like GM pumped out some Bolts Q3 and Q4 2022.

Chevy Bolt had best sales ever after recalls and leads in mainstream EV sales says GM

GM released its 2022 year-end sales update and is touting the humble Chevy Bolt’s best sales year ever, calling the...

electrek.co

 

Here's an interesting article about where the industry is going relative to dealership networks and pricing:

Carmakers face a crossroads as they work to fit auto dealers into their EV plans

For dealers, EVs will mean new employee training, infrastructure and substantial investments to be able to service, sell and charge the vehicles.

www.cnbc.com

 

I lived in Ann Arbor 2000-2005 and read an article about the impact of the automotive industry on the American economy in a local paper back then. They reported 10% of American workers were associated with the automotive industry in some way. The article listed a litany of areas that included manufacturing and suppliers, sales, maintenance/repair (labor along with the parts manufacturing), financing, after-market merchandise, the fuels and lubricants industry, and I am sure I have forgotten quite a few areas.

If the EVs are reliable, and they should be with a lot less mechanical complexity than ICEs, this will produce a tectonic shift to our economy with most of the areas listed above playing a much smaller role during the life of the vehicles. I suspect ICEs will still be with us for a long time so there is a buffer for people in the ICE support business, but they will need to develop new EV-related skills to remain viable. I am not sure how many people will resist retraining and find themselves out of a good job. I witnessed a lot of this at Caterpillar Tractor Company and could never figure out why these people valued their ego over a good job that was paying a living wage...and Caterpillar would pay for their retraining...when I saw them struggling as they competed for unskilled jobs later as the result of their obstinance.

It will be interesting to see how the dealerships respond as the manufacturers change the profit model and recast the dealerships into a concierge and delivery role...without a lot of after-delivery business directly related to the cars they deliver. The sharks are in the water.