> Ford suffers from having corrupt dealers
Do you mean that dealers ask for bribes to customers to deliver cars, or that customers bribe dealers to skip the waiting list, or something like that?
Do you mean that dealers ask for bribes to customers to deliver cars, or that customers bribe dealers to skip the waiting list, or something like that?
So companies like Ford can only sell what independent dealers want to sell. You can go to the dealer and ask to buy a car sitting on the lot, and the dealer can just… not sell you the car. For any price. And it is also illegal for the manufacturer to force/coerce the dealer to sell it to you.
Of course the dealer can do softer things also, like talk down the car when you test drive or talk up the benefits of other cars. Or tell you that next year’s model will be much better than this one, so you should wait.
Additionally, most dealers do not actually pay for the car until it is sold to the customer (the manufacturer offers financing to the dealer, called “floor planning”).
Independent dealers do not want to sell EVs because of the perceived loss of service revenue. So they simply offer bad deals on the car that most customers would not take. The cars sit on the dealer’s lot, but that costs the dealer nothing (see above), even though Ford wants to sell an EV and customers want to buy EVs.
For awhile they got away with it, but eventually it became obvious as to what manufacturers were doing and not having to advertise and built up a local car and mechanic and gas supply economy, so legal protections were put in place to protect the independent dealers from getting shafted.
Of course add on another 100 years of political fuckery all around the industry and you get the mess of today.
Then because of the monopolies the sibling comment mentions, you can't go elsewhere.