Half of U.S. Buick Dealers Take Buyouts Rather Than Sell EV’s
Smart businesses don’t sell things customers aren’t buying.
The market for electric vehicles isn’t as robust as climate cultists and their media minions would have Americans believe.
A few weeks ago, I reported that car dealerships across the country were begging Biden to use his pen-and-phone to rescind the mandate to end unrealistic EV mandates that have sprung up in blue states.
In another article, I noted Congress budgeted $7.5 billion to build tens of thousands of electric vehicle chargers across the country, and none had yet been built. Since then, one tax-payer funded EV charging station was built. In London, Ohio, and apparently, no one is using it.
There are even more signs that the American public is pushing back against this net-zero nonsense.
General Motors is relearning an important lesson in capitalism: Smart businesses don’t sell things customers aren’t buying.
General Motors bought out roughly half of Buick dealers across the U.S. due to their reluctance to sell electric vehicles as the automaker looks to transition to EVs.
About half of GM’s 2,000 Buick dealers accepted the voluntary buyout. The program remains open so additional dealers may opt to take the buyout instead of making the EV-related investments that GM required for them to continue selling Buicks, as GM is planning for the brand’s vehicles to be 100% electric by 2030.
Ford Motor Company is also having the same issue.
Since it announced the Model e Certified program last year, Ford has dealt with its fair share of backlash related to this new EV sales program, which Ford dealers were given the chance to either opt in or out of. Facing a number of legal challenges and trust issues pertaining to its implementation, the automaker has made some changes to the Model e Certified program based on dealer feedback, which satisfied some of those concerns, though others remain.
Following these changes, some Ford dealers chose to opt out of the program after initially opting in. Now, the automaker has revealed that around half of all Ford dealers have chosen to forego the EV sales program altogether, at least for 2024, according to the Detroit Free Press.
According to FoMoCo, around 1,550 Ford dealers in the U.S. – around half – have chosen to opt out of the EV sales program in the coming year, compared to the 1,920 dealers that opted in roughly one year ago.
Perhaps the dealers see the regulatory handwriting that is on the wall. In January, new rules kick in that end monetary incentives for EVs purchases based on how much foreign content is in their batteries.
It’s gotten so we need a digital assistant to keep up with all that’s happening in the world of electric cars here at the end of 2023. New Treasury Department regulations go into effect on January 1, 2024 that tighten the rules for battery materials and components. As a result, several electric cars that are eligible for federal incentives today won’t be eligible once the ball drops at midnight in Times Square a few days from now.
“Treasury proposed strict rules disqualifying all EVs with certain foreign battery content including low-value components, which effectively means most EVs will not be eligible beginning on January 1. After reviewing Treasury’s long-awaited proposed guidance, we believe the Cadillac LYRIQ and Chevrolet Blazer EV will temporarily lose eligibility for the clean vehicle credit on Jan. 1, 2024 because of two minor components,” GM spokesperson Liz Winter said in a statement that was reported by the Detroit News.
“While we await final rules, GM has pulled ahead sourcing plans for qualifying components in early 2024 and will advocate for our dealers and customers who purchase vehicles built ahead of the new guidance.”
Now, you can believe the dealerships who daily interact with potential car buyers . . . or you can trust what Department of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has to say about the “fluctuations” in EV sales.
Biden Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg on auto dealers' concerns that electric vehicles aren't selling: "There's gonna be year-to-year fluctuations" pic.twitter.com/M4eiYIUVCk
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) December 18, 2023
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Comments
I live in Commiefornia, about an hour east of LA, in the heart of liberal nonsense.
There’s a set of ~6 chargers at a shopping center near my house that I go to sometimes (great wing place and a Jersey Mikes).
MAYBE 1 in 10 visits is there an electric car parked there plugged in.
Dodge is coming out with a new electric Charger, but there is confusion about what to call it.
“It doesn’t really charge well,” said one driver after putting the pedal to the medal.
“I know,” said another who sat in his garage with a dead battery.
“Well, least we’re saving the planet,” said one of the dealers who opted to remain open.
Naturally, the dealers who opted out had no comment as they took the money and rushed to the bank.
ok thats just awesome LOLL
Chargee? That you plug into a chargER?
How about runny discharger.
8% opted to have needles stuck in their eyes.
EVs: the Bud Light of automobiles.
I think Elon Musk would like to have a debate with you about that.
He might, but he’s had to slash prices to keep sales going as well.
Buicks? WHAT Buicks? Except for the Enclave,all Buick offers are Korean and Chinese cars with Buick badges. Even a fascia that is distinctly Buick has been replaced with something so generic that nobody knows that it’s even a Buick anymore.
As for an electric vehicle, all general motors has shown the public or the dealers are some pretty pictures of cars that don’t yet exist. I as a businessman would not bet my future on this even if I wanted to sell a car that nobody wanted to buy because if its means of propulsion.
ever. heard of the edsel?
The Edsel was the ultimate ‘no idea what the stupid unwashed masses actually want’ product. It was made without any actual market testing, and conceived by a bunch of suits with a bunch of features that people THEORETICALLY wanted, What it produced was a mishmash of theoretically popular features among ‘the public’, with no actual thought given to what people would buy all of those features.
It was, in effect, the ultimate Bolshevik car – made for what a bunch of rich suits thought the public SHOULD want, with no idea what they actually wanted or how much they were willing to pay for what they wanted.
Ford never pledged to be 100% Edsel by 1964.
Considering that I have always had huge problems with the electronics and wiring harnesses in the GM vehicles I’ve owned, I don’t I think I want a car from them that’s All Electronics
The fact that the bottom of the market fell out of EVs with the loss of subsidies proves that they are a popular as pork cutlets in Mecca.
I am sure they are adequate for the lefties in cities, but for real people doing real things, they just don’t measure up.
Let them compete fairly and let the market decide. I think it already has….
Their utility is to limited, mostly over battery tech. I did see something about promising battery tech that would be long range, claiming they would power for 6 months, but that may be marketing BS.
Since they’ve been promising the magic bullet on their battery technology advancements for at least the last decade, I always say let me see it first.
Back in August a Hertz branch manager explained why they had so few non-EV’s for us: corporate committed the fleet would be all-electric in 5 years. He thought it was an even worse idea than I did but there’s nothing he can do about it.
Now when we go to the U.S. we rent from Avis.
People are waking up to the Dhimmi-crats’ EV scam. The notion that an EV is technologically superior, more convenient and more environmentally-friendly than gas-powered vehicles is farcical on its face and is total bunk.
Even putting aside the fire risks, faster tire wear and high costs for replacing expensive, short-lived batteries, EV’s intrinsic charging limitations and range limitations make them exceedingly poor value propositions and lousy bargains for drivers.
The EV market will eventually dwindle to a small pool of deep-pocketed, virtue-signaling Dhimmi-crats, for whom such vehicles are nothing more than expensive toys.
Don’t forget the higher insurance premiums…
A Hertz manager told me he’s had customers run out of power in the middle of nowhere. Seems that the gauge telling you how many miles or whatever (hours?) of charge you have left is based on the manufacturer’s idea of average battery consumption. He said if you drive highway speed or use AC or sound system, you can run out of power sooner without much warning.
Does it also raise the premium for fire coverage on your homeowners policy?
A Hertz manager told me he’s had customers run out of power in the middle of nowhere. Seems that the gauge telling you how many miles or whatever (hours?) of charge you have left is based on the manufacturer’s idea of average battery consumption. He said if you drive highway speed or use AC or sound system, you can run out of power sooner without much warning.
Don’t forget that the utter worthlessness of these virtue signalling toys becomes exponentially worse in cold weather. Ask Canadians.
EV’s also feature lousy and diminishing battery performance in hot weather conditions, too. Basically, the batteries are sensitive to both low and high temperatures, adding to EV’s general uselessness.
Movie theater next to where I work installed a half dozen charging stations about five years ago.
Nothing of those stations remains. They were decommissioned about two years ago, and the last physical components were removed last week.
IMO the issue here is market saturation. The early adopters, the folks who simply must have the ‘it’ product, the true believers in this tech and those convinced purchase of EV is an environmental atonement have bought one. Those are, IMO, the real contours of the current EV market. The rest of us ain’t interested b/c an EV at present isn’t a better ‘mousetrap’ and until EV have comparable performance and costs to ICE vehicles the size of the willing market will not expand.
Remember that EV’s are not new technology. They will never have comparable convenience to ICE vehicles, because a battery charge will never be faster than a gas tank fill-up. Faster acceleration, okay, but, the average driver doesn’t care about that. Convenience and cost is what it comes down to, and, EV’s already lost the battle to ICE vehicles in the early 20th century.
Biden green new deal and UAW gutting american car manufacturers.
They should relocate manufacturing to mexico, like ford bronco. Keep selling gas engine cars into states that want them.