Ford is offering the home charger installation, or a $1000 public charging credit. I'm trying to shop for one of these trucks right now, and my sense is that the dealers are not a big fan of EVs and are almost actively working against Ford. The buying process is extremely painful compared to my last two purchases from pure EV manufacturers.
In the last 5 years the only real service my EV has had is a 12V battery replacement (done under warranty), cabin air filters, wipers/wiper fluid, and tire rotations.
And those can pretty easily be done DIY or at a local tire shop.
I can imagine why dealerships may not be pleased, and have heard about other EV brands having things like recommended $300 annual service visits where the dealership basically does the above items and checks for software updates. I guess some people will pay it and that might help keep the dealerships from being too mad about the changes.
It’s not your imagination. GM and F are awful about this. They even significantly curtailed their plans for training and updating dealers to support EVs better.
It’s an under-appreciated intangible “innovation” from Tesla that you can order a car as simply as you can order from Amazon. People hate car dealers with good reason.
Well of course dealers don't want to sell you EVs. They have far far less maintenance than an ICE car. There are less options on many of them. And the biggest reason is that they know their customers who try 'non-dealer' sellers like Tesla, Rivian, and Lucid are far happier overall. And the EVs plus dealers are clearly not matching the good things that come from Tesla or Rivian. Another example, there's basically no need for an annual service visit. The dealers are trying to make kind of silly service visits, charging $100 to rotate the tires. https://www.insideevsforum.com/community/index.php?threads/s...
There are problems with no-dealer companies, when they are in initial stages it can be hard to get repairs if there is no local service center. Rivian is still growing a lot and can get behind, Tesla seems to have basically built out enough service in a lot of places but also can get behind. But even real auto dealers can get behind too.
I have a Tesla and my interaction with the local service center has been pretty much as good as my prior interactions with a trusted mechanic.
The dealer model is just regulatory capture. It's a dumb middle man that provides no value beyond what the manufacturer can do. It's only there because dealers tend to be over represented in state and federal officials. So, of course, they keep and create regulations which penalize direct sales.
Sure they’re against them - they’re much simpler to service and most likely significantly more reliable. Given that dealers typically make most of their money on service (repairs) than on sales of vehicles, it’s no wonder they’re more likely to be biased against EVs. I have an ICE F-150 (2016) and I can’t fathom only having 240ish miles of range. I’ll wait 5 years for the 450 mile version.
They now test them doing things like going 70 mph without stopping, got 270 miles https://insideevs.com/reviews/598000/ford-f150-lightning-ran.... EPA doesn't drive them that steadily that fast on their test run. The new Tesla model 3 (highland) gets 370 miles on that test.
This is a rebadged chevy blazer ev, except it (1) doesn't have onstar (yay!), (2) had android auto and apple carplay unlike GM cars.
What's the best tradeoff for cost vs range?
It's about $60k before discounts. The tesla model 3 highland (recent refresh) can do an amazing 370 miles at 70mph. The only problem is it's a tesla.
Out of spec drives until the battery is dead. They haven't tested the honda prologue yet.
My wife drives a ‘23 Blazer RS (non-EV). We killed OnStar as soon as the trial ended. Still has CarPlay. At $44k with all the discounts (my dad is a GM retiree), it was hardly a bargain. I can’t imagine paying $60K for the EV version of it. Don’t get me wrong it’s a nice car, but it’s a Chevy.
