Auto Dealers Proclaim They’re on Board With Electric Vehicles

NEW YORK — The “all-in” slogan, as in, “Dealers Are All-In On EVs” was prominent at the recent press days for the New York International Auto Show and at last month’s National Automobile Dealers Assn. show in Las Vegas.

“Consumers demand dealers in an EV world,” Mike Alford, 2022 NADA chairman, says at the New York Auto Forum. “Sounds crazy, right? But it’s not. It’s not crazy, but that’s not the popular narrative.”

The forum was hosted by J.D. Power, NADA and the Greater New York Automobile Dealers Assn., which sponsors the New York auto show. Alford is dealer principal of Marine Chevrolet in Jacksonville, NC, and Trent Buick-GMC-Cadillac in New Bern, NC.

To the extent there’s popular support for the “dealers aren’t interested” perception, it’s probably an outdated urban myth from the days when there were hardly any EVs on the market and early EV adopters had a different mindset than today.

That’s according to Mike Dovorany, vice president-Automotive & Mobility for Escalent, a research and data analysis firm based in suburban Detroit.

Escalent’s consumer research notes that today, EVs are more numerous and purchase consideration has grown to mainstream proportions. Today’s EV shoppers are counting on dealerships to provide expertise in electric vehicles and related questions such as how to set up a home charging station, the company says.

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In contrast, early EV adopters were much more likely to tutor themselves in every aspect of EV ownership, and they had less need or desire for dealership expertise, Dovorany says on the sidelines of the forum.

“They were very self-motivated. In many ways, they would come into a dealership and sort of test the salesman, and they may have known more than the salesman, who didn’t have many of these things to sell,” he says. “That’s not necessarily the most conducive way to approach a dealership.”

Meanwhile, EV-only automakers are lobbying state legislatures around the country for permission to follow Tesla’s example and sell vehicles directly to the public. Those newcomers are encouraging the notion that dealers aren’t “all-in” on EVs, says Mark Schienberg, president of the Greater New York Automobile Dealers Assn.

True, franchised dealer groups are against direct selling, but that doesn’t mean they’re against EVs, he says.

“The concept is, they don’t want to follow the same rules as everyone else,” Schienberg (pictured, below left) says of the start-ups. “Meanwhile, the franchised dealer system has developed dealership service facilities, loaner cars, you name it, to serve their customers.”

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To counter that, research and consulting firm We Predict says combined repair and maintenance costs for EVs on average were actually higher than vehicles with internal-combustion engines at three months and at 12 months of service, and roughly equal to ICE models at three years of service.

Renee Stephens, vice president-automotive at Ann Arbor, MI-based We Predict, says in general, maintenance costs for EVs were lower. But she says repair costs and costs for service campaigns were higher.

Stephens says, “Parts and labor are higher on EVs than on gas models.”