US dealers return electric cars to manufacturer: "Enough is enough"

The main American manufacturers are honest: the electric car is certainly not a cash cow. The bookkeepers Ford for example, opened a book. They reported that the division dealing with electric vehicles will make a loss of $ 4.5 billion this year (4.16 billion euros). The car manufacturer had calculated that it would have to accept a loss on EVs in the first few years, but the accountants had not estimated the loss that high.

Dealers are stirring

Now the dealers are also sulking. Because they won’t lose their electric cars on the paving stones. They even refuse to buy new EVs from the manufacturer because they already have large stocks of unsold plug-in vehicles on their premises. No more can be added to that. This creates an interesting problem: more electric cars are being built than ever, but at the same time it has never been more difficult to sell them.

Business Insider outlines the problem in the US. The first group of buyers, so-called early adopters, now has an electric car. Thanks to them, the share of electric cars in the US is now about 6 percent. Usually the prices of products fall when the new one is gone and the supply increases. Not so with electric cars. They remain too impractical for most consumers (small range, few charging options) and – above all – far too expensive. And dealers find it difficult to explain to their customers that they have to invest $10,000 more in a car that is less convenient to use.

stalemate

A car is sold in the US in an average of 54 days. But an electric car is gathering dust twice as long. Yet manufacturers continue to produce electric vehicles, after the immense investments made to build or refurbish factories and retrain personnel. At the same time, they cannot close their eyes to the dealers’ problems. A solution to the stalemate is not yet in sight. It seems that quite a bit of water still has to flow through the river to enthuse American motorists for an electric car.