I think this is probably more important than people give it credit for. I have an acquaintance who works R&D at a traditional car company (but on self driving features) he says the internal 'fights' between ICE and electric are very real and damaging.
You can experience it first hand if you go try to test drive a Chevy Bolt - Motor Trend car of the year in 2017. I spoke to dealers who (pretended?) unawareness of the model and didn't want to help me find one. Another tried to talk me out of it. Finally one dealer was well informed about its pros and cons, and had several for sale.
Another example: bmw i3. 114 mile range on the 2017 model, really? And that's up from less than 100 miles before that. Painfully token.
The big problem the big auto manufacturers are having is the battery and cost. A mass-market electric car cannot cost as much as Tesla's offerings, and a huge part of that cost is the battery. Even with the most optimistic cost projections of battery costs in the near future, it's hard to see how to offer an electric car which is competitive on both cost and range with an ICE car.
It's just a car, to the salesman. If I went in and looked for a Chevrolet Equinox and the dealer didn't have anyt, they'd try to sell me another model.
Just like if you went to Best Buy looking for a certain TV, they'll just try to sell you the one on the shelf
I've had on multiple occasions gone into a dealership and had them tell me that they have the car i'm asking about, but that I don't want that car, and that I want this other car instead.
I went into nissan to look at the Juke a while back, the asshole wouldn't even let me look at it until I literally started leaving. He just kept pressing the Rogue saying that I'd like it a lot more... Then when he finally took me to it, it was still wrapped in plastic and they said they couldn't do a test drive.
Another time I went to go look at the Chevy Bolt when it first came out, they said they had a few in stock, but they would not stop trying to get me to test drive a Malibu instead. They kept pushing how it was a better car, how it was cheaper, how it would go further, how it looks better.
Eventually they let me test drive the Bolt, but the whole time the guy just kept pointing out how all the features in the car were also in the Malibu.
It just left such a shitty taste in my mouth. I literally went in there asking about a single model of car each time, and it seemed like they did everything they could to actively sabotage my ability to buy it.
I went in to dealer, money in hand, to buy a specific car I knew they had in stock and that I'd already picked out. The salesman then proceeded to convince me that I actually wanted this other model which would be much better for me. Fine you've convinced me, how much for that other car. Salesman comes back a couple of minutes later and sheepishly admits they don't actually have that car in stock and won't be getting any for 4-6 weeks. I walk out without buying a car.
This is why online car shopping needs to be a thing. I experienced the exact same thing. I'm a highly informed customer who knew every car I wanted to see but almost every sales guy ignored that fact, besides at a Honda location. Which isn't surprising that I ended up with a Honda.
I would have bought it online if I could and it's very possible I wouldn't have ended up with a Honda, that has to play a role in each company's auto sales.
Same here, I ended up going into an Audi dealer after the Bolt fiasco, and it was a night and day difference. When I asked a question about a car, they answered it happily! When I wanted to look at a car, they took me to a few. When I wanted to test drive one, they pulled up their inventory of cars and asked what one I want to test drive.
No "you don't want that", no "we are trying to keep the miles down on that one", no condescending talk about how some other car is probably more in my range.
And unsurprisingly I ended up getting an Audi!
It's one of the big reasons why I think the whole "online sales" thing is perfect with Tesla. They have showrooms in many places where those who want to look at and ask questions about the cars can go, and when you actually want to buy, you buy it like something off amazon, and it gets delivered when ready.
You can pick the car and get pre-negotiated pricing online. You still have to go to the dealer to actually pick it up, but you don't need to be "sold to", negotiate the price, etc. The people I know who have used it have gotten excellent prices, but it's always worth comparing to the estimates from Consumer Reports or other sources.
I used https://www.unhaggle.com to find out the MRSP of the car and saved about $2k from the list price, basically the lowest price the dealer could offer. It's basically a lead-gen system for dealerships which I discovered after my experience mentioned above. The dealer was very welcoming with us using it and said it was getting more common.
I worked in a small sales and marketing office for IBM in the early 90's. I remember the sales people, who made very good money from mainframe sales, openly discussing how they didn't even want customers to know about RS6000's. I think the margins were pretty low on RS6000's at the time.
Anyway, internal struggles holding back product lines is a very real thing.
