In many states in the United States it is illegal to buy a car directly from the manufacturer or from a dealer owned by the manufacturer. In all states it is illegal for a manufacturer with an existing independent dealer network (which is to say, every manufacturer except the EV startups) to sell directly to the customer or to open a new factory-owned dealer.

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.