Car dealers are erecting barriers for electric car buyers
Even in environmentally conscious Scandanavia, it’s hard to sell electric vehicles (EV). That’s in part due to the people selling them. “Dealerships and sales personnel pose a significant barrier for [EV] uptake,” states a study published in May in the journal Nature. “Dealers have little to no incentive to properly sell EVs, even in a Nordic region so steadfastly committed to decarbonizing transport.”
To study this, Danish university researchers sent undercover shoppers to visit 82 car dealerships in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. Buyers were asked to remain neutral with no initial inclination toward any type of vehicle. Over the course of 126 car-shopping encounters, the researchers quantified sellers’ interactions with the buyers. They found that salespeople tended to systematically misinform shoppers about EVs, if not dismiss or ignore EVs entirely (77% of the time). In the minority of cases when EVs were mentioned, most steered buyers toward gasoline or diesel vehicles.
EVs should reach price parity with conventional vehicles around 2025, and the economics should then change dramatically, since electric cars will then both cost less to make and operate. But as nations gear up for bans on internal combustion engines in the coming decades, and incentivize EV manufacturers with millions of dollars, they can’t forget about one of the most crucial steps: the point of sale.
Of course servicing EVs also means way mess money for dealers so they do likely prefer selling ICE vehicles…
See https://qz.com/1309799/car-dealers-are-erecting-barriers-for-electric-car-buyers/
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