• mommykink@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Dealerships charging +30% “market adjustment” fees should be illegal. It happens to ICEs, too, but I’ve never seen stealerships price gouge anything like they do with shitty mid-trim EVs.

    • Poayjay@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      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.

      • remotelove@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        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.)

        • PlantJam@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          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.

        • thisbenzingring@lemmy.sdf.org
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          1 year ago

          Remember to walk away when they don’t budge. Sometimes they will stop you from leaving and you might still get a good deal.

        • AA5B@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          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

  • mierdabird@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 year ago

    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

    • Sanctus@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      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.

      • ripcord@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        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.

        • Sanctus@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          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.

            • Sanctus@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Well, you see, you don’t have to pay the entirety of the 47k right away. I have no idea why but they said I couldn’t make payments on the transmission when I asked in person.

              • ripcord@kbin.social
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                1 year ago

                While I agree that EVs are too expensive, it just sounds like you’re making the argument that you can’t buy any new car. Which is also fair but different.

      • 1984@lemmy.today
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        1 year ago

        You will own nothing and be happy. Google that and you understand.

        • Sanctus@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          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.

        • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          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.

    • Hypx@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      BEVs are fundamentally more expensive than conventional cars. That is the real problem here. Blaming the dealers won’t change that.

  • zerbey@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    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?

  • JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    I needed to drive 5 hours to get one at a good price. And they were moving tones of that model though. The other places I went to also mentioned their EVs were moving very quickly, one I was looking at was bought within 2 days of listing. So this doesn’t at all match with my experience. Maybe they’re referring to the super expensive luxury EVs rather than lower price ones?

    • Burn_The_Right@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Or, hear me out… they are lying. The dealerships are just lying liars and are lying. Because that’s what liars do.

      • cm0002@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        There was just an article (or a couple) the other week about how dealerships are intentionally pushing people to ICE vehicles and lying about EVs anyway they can. I think in one example a sales person told a customer looking at EVs that they can only go 25 MPH or something lmao

  • ApeNo1@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    It is not in a dealers best interest to sell vehicles that require less costly services for the life of the car which is a big ongoing revenue for many dealerships.

    • III@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      This is the exact reason everyone across the globe exclusively use horses for transportation. Replacing them with these horseless carriages would destroy the shoeing business, where would we put all of the feed?.. What is Biden thinking?!

    • AA5B@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Sales people do not have that long a perspective. The article does talk about 100-200% turnover every year, which is again horrible practices coming back to bite them, but the sales person is only interested in immediate commission and bonus

      • ApeNo1@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        In Australia, Deloitte’s shared this breakdown.

        “On average, barely 5 per cent of a dealer’s profit comes from new car sales. The majority (about 50 per cent) comes from parts and service, while the remainder comes from finance and insurance (30 per cent) and the balance is from used cars (15 per cent).”

        In the US it appears to be very similar.

        “So where does the majority of a dealership’s profit come from? It’s not from car sales, at least not directly. It’s from the service and parts department, which accounts for the other 49.6% of the dealership’s gross profits, according to NADA.”

        https://www.edmunds.com/car-buying/where-does-the-car-dealer-make-money.html

  • TheMurphy@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    How about you and the manufacturers sell them cheaper, and now here me out. Maybe then, and I know this is a crazy idea. But could we make it so that the already rich multi million dollar owners earned less?

    Nah, wouldn’t want that. I’m sure VW and the gang need the money.

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
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    1 year ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    After making record profits in the wake of the pandemic and the collapse of just-in-time inventory chains, they’re now complaining that selling electric vehicles is too hard.

    Almost 4,000 dealers from around the United States have sent an open letter to President Joe Biden calling for the government to slow down its plan to increase EV adoption between now and 2032.

    More and more car buyers are opting to go fully electric each year, although even a record 2023 will fail to see EV uptake reach double-digit percentages.

    Mindful of the fact that transportation accounts for the largest segment of US carbon emissions and that our car-centric society encourages driving, the US Department of Energy published a proposed rule in April that would alter the way the government calculates each automaker’s corporate average fuel efficiency.

    Over the summer, industry analysts at Cox Auto made plenty of headlines with data showing that new EV inventory was growing.

    Helpfully, the dealers published a complete list of the 3,882 signatories, making it very easy for people to see which businesses are opposing action on climate change.


    The original article contains 586 words, the summary contains 183 words. Saved 69%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

    • KrummsHairyBalls@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      Is that because they just aren’t making them because no one can afford them?

      I just paid $18,000 for an 8 year old base model Jeep Patriot with 210K.

      Car market is fucked.

      • Magister@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        The wait time is because there is too much demand and not enough supply. Some people are selling their “waiting list place” for like $2000…

        And yes car market is fucked, new or used. I have a 10yo car and couldn’t afford a new one in case of total or something :-/

  • 1984@lemmy.today
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    1 year ago

    We don’t even know if the batteries on those things will worsen with time, like all other batteries do.

    You cant replace the battery on a EW, it’s cheaper to buy a new car.

    • zerbey@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      BEV/Hybrids have been around a while, there’s places you can buy individual cells when they die and it’s pretty easy to replace them. As time goes by, it should become no harder than going to the auto parts store like we do with regular ICEs. Unless they do shady stuff like making the batteries OEM only, like how Apple do with their batteries.

    • Steve@communick.news
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      1 year ago

      We don’t even know if the batteries on those things will worsen with time, like all other batteries do.

      We absolutely do. Of course they degrade over time. But they last much monger than expected. Today they all come with 100,000mile 8-10year warranties.

      You cant replace the battery on a EW, it’s cheaper to buy a new car.

      Of course you can! They’re designed to be replaced. Most of them can be swapped out in about an hour at an equipped shop. And the cost (outside of warrantee) is typically about 20-30% the cost of the car. So it’s absolutely cheaper to replace the battery than buy new.

      • 1984@lemmy.today
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        1 year ago

        Thank you, I didn’t know this. But paying 30% of the new car price after they expire sounds awful… But at least it’s possible.