
Ford Dealership: You Can't Charge the Mustang Mach E at Home - ianmobbs
https://evbite.com/ford-dealership-you-cant-charge-the-mustang-mach-e-at-home/
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blakesterz
So the headline is kinda click-baity in that someone at a dealership WRONGLY
told the author "you can't change the Mustang Mach E at home" because
apparently no one at any of the many Ford dealers called had a clue what they
were talking about. Still an interesting read, but you can apparently charge
your Mach E at home if you get one.

"Absolutely nothing but misinformation was sold to me. You can’t charge a
Mustang Mach E at home, they can use Tesla Superchargers, it doesn’t have
enough range, a plug-in hybrid is better, ect ect. Nothing of importance
because it’s all, simply put, wrong."

~~~
jbob2000
Some car companies actually don’t want you to buy certain models, believe it
or not! The Chevy Bolt was hard to get a hold of because Chevy just had it in
their line up for regulatory reasons - they had no interest in actually
selling and servicing these cars, it was more expensive than what they’d get
for the sticker price, so it was purely to meet emissions regulations on
paper. Certain luxury brands _will not_ sell you the “base” model of a car
because they don’t actually produce them, they’re just there to be on paper
for marketing.

So in reading about this trouble with the Mach E, I can’t help but think that
it’s just there to get you in to the dealership to buy the thing Ford actually
wants to sell you; a Mustang GT or an F150.

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Rebelgecko
Using a car salesman as your source of info is honestly pretty dubious for any
car, especially one that the dealership isn't even going to see in person for
at least a year. Ford does require dealerships to have a designated EV lead
who takes some relevant training if the dealership wants to be "EV certified"
by Ford. I wonder how many of these dealerships had that certification?

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Turing_Machine
> Using a car salesman as your source of info is honestly pretty dubious for
> any car

You could pretty much replace both instances of "car" with anything and this
would be equally true.

Conversation I had years ago:

$boss: Please do $job using the new $overpricedpieceofcrap.

me: Sorry, $overpricedpieceofcrap can't do $job.

$boss: But $guy1 and $guy2 said it would do $job.

me: $boss, those guys are _salesmen_.

And suddenly $boss was enlightened.

~~~
A_Parr
How long did it last?

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chrisblackwell
I think this is more of the dealerships wanting to hold onto their business
model, vs the Ford Company seeing which way the puck is going.

Most dealerships make most of their money from their service department.
Considering most electric vehicles require much less service, this presents a
very large problem.

The entire dealership model is going to get turned on it's head over the next
decade.

~~~
lykr0n
A lot of things are. There will be a lot of job loss in these "middle men"
industries.

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kjksf
This is not just Ford and there are more studies like this, both in US and in
Europe.

See:

* [https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/us-auto-dealers...](https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/us-auto-dealerships-are-bad-at-selling-electric-vehicles-study-finds)

* [https://www.coxautoinc.com/news/overcoming-electric-vehicle-...](https://www.coxautoinc.com/news/overcoming-electric-vehicle-misconceptions-is-crucial-to-converting-consideration-to-sales/)

* [https://qz.com/1309799/car-dealers-are-erecting-barriers-for...](https://qz.com/1309799/car-dealers-are-erecting-barriers-for-electric-car-buyers/)

* [https://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/2018/05/glib-car-dealer...](https://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/2018/05/glib-car-dealers-are-a-major-obstacle-to-ev-adoption/)

* [https://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/dealerships-dismiss-...](https://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/dealerships-dismiss-electric-vehicles/)

So many people are quick to enumerate all the challenges Tesla faces but
here's a big one for all the (currently) top 10 car makers: making their
frenemy dealership networks into EV sales forces as opposed to anti-sale
force.

Currently the car makers might sell a volume of sub-50k per year even with
hostile dealership force, just based on the interest generated by media in
general and some advertising.

But it's going to be much harder to sell 500k cars a year if your salesforce
is misinformed or even lying about EV and pushing ICE cars instead.

And fixing it is not as simple as telling dealerships to change because they
are not owned by car companies. Those are independent businesses with their
own agenda, negotiated contracts etc. Car makers might end up having to apply
a lot of carrot, which will contribute to even more losses on EV cars.

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RickJWagner
Ugh, one of my pet peeves.

I love cars and cannot believe the ignorance of some salespeople. I've spoken
with salespeople that knew next to nothing about the brand of car sold at
their dealership.

It wouldn't take much effort to _study_ the cars a bit. Doing so would make a
great difference in the buying experience. Yet it's sadly lacking, sometimes.

