Scandinavian Car Dealers Don’t Want People To Buy Electric Cars
A new study finds the majority of car dealers in Scandinavia do a poor job of selling electric cars, even discouraging people from buying them. Are dealer incentives needed?
A new study finds the majority of car dealers in Scandinavia do a poor job of selling electric cars, even discouraging people from buying them. Are dealer incentives needed?
This story is about Tesla’s moats, but I don’t mean to imply that Buffett would invest in Tesla. Tesla is far from the value investments of the Berkshire Hathaway portfolio. Rather, Buffett’s comments are to demonstrate the importance of moats. Morningstar even has a guide called Why Moats Matter. Understanding the moats a business employs is clearly important to understanding the business and its future.
During the months of September and October 2017, Ipsos RDA deployed secret shoppers covering 11 auto brands selling electric vehicles across the 10 largest markets for electric vehicles in the US, with the intent being to determine dealer preparedness for the rapid growth of the sector.
Swedish entrepreneur Gisli Gislason is the CEO of EVEN Electric. He says selling cars today is based on a model developed a century ago — a model that is inappropriate for selling electric cars. In order to promote his vision of fossil fuel free future, he is partnering with Microsoft Sweden to further develop a new a EV sales and trading platform designed exclusively for the needs of electric car buyers and sellers.
Tesla is prohibited by law from selling its cars directly to customers in Texas. Those who want one of the US manufacturer’s high-tech electric cars can buy one online, but then have to pick it up in some other state and drive it home to the Lone Star state.
Tesla has been trying to get the Texas legislature to change the law for years without success. Now, lawmakers in Texas have once again told Tesla to go pound sand.
Is it true that people aren’t interested in buying electric cars, as Ford CEO Mark Fields claims? EV sales are hovering around 1% of the market in the US despite all that has been written about them and significant increases in the number of electric car charging stations available. “Ah hah!” Fields and his colleagues say. “See? We told you so.” Gina Coplon-Newfield, the director of electric vehicles initiative at the Sierra Club sees things differently. “When manufacturers say buyers aren’t interested in buying electric vehicles, it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy,” she says.
The Colorado Solar Project 2020 seeks to encourage Colorado auto dealers to add solar power systems to their dealership facilities before the federal tax credits begin dropping at the end of 2019.
A 5-0 ruling by Utah’s Supreme Court has denied Tesla the requested right to sell its vehicles directly to consumers, according to recent reports.
Following unsuccessful attempts last year to limit Tesla’s ability to sell directly to customers in the state, pro-dealership forces in Indiana have already begun this year’s anti-Tesla efforts. … The newly proposed House Bill 1592 (authored by Representative Edmond Soliday) would effectively stop Tesla from selling within the state by 2019 (based on a couple of somewhat flexible assumptions).
In a minor victory for the company in its ongoing conflict with the various car dealership associations of the US, Tesla has maintained its right to open a new gallery showroom on Greenwich Avenue (Greenwich) in Connecticut.