Comment by rootusrootus
1 month ago
Judging from how many people seem surprised by my open frunk at the grocery store, saying things like "I had no idea Ford made an electric truck!" I think they could have done more to market it. I sometimes wonder if they really wanted to sell a lot of them.
I remember when tesla was young and elon talked about selling electric cars through dealers. He said it would not work, they would not be advocates, they would prevent sales.
And I think that is spot on.
I also suspect internally the thinking is that the f150 lightning costs more to make than sell, which means it won't get strong advocacy.
Thing is, I'm 100% certain years of tesla vehicles cost more to make than they sold for, just in the nature of developing new things.
I wonder who makes their decision by going to the dealer, though? Ford didn't even regularly stock Lightnings at the dealer, in fact, they basically sold them online and kept inventory at regional fulfillment centers. As soon as someone pulled the trigger, they'd ship the truck the last mile to the dealer of their choice.
Maybe the dealers could have done better. In fact, they definitely could have. Most did have a demo Lightning, in my experience, but that doesn't mean salespeople were pushing customers towards them.
Tesla made a lot of their money selling carbon credits so it is likely some of their cars didn't break even.
Making it look too much like a regular F-150 was a mistake. You need the vehicle to look distinctive enough for it to market itself.
I guess that’s kind of the defense of Musk on the cyber truck. If Ford can’t sell hem off their F150 platform, it means you need to make more of a splash. He just went too far…
I've seen an argument that the Prius was intentionally made "ugly/noticeable" because they knew the buyers would be interested in the technology AND want to be recognizable as such.
When hybrids are common, the styling reverted to more normal car-like.
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I would argue against that! If anything, I hated the firs hybrids that where distinctly different, and ugly.
There's an argument that they did that intentionally - some hated it, but more bought it because they wanted to be recognized as having bought a hybrid - hence the "Toyota Pius" nickname.
the dealerships did not want them, this already made it unlikely to succeed (towing range mania was the other thing)
Why did the dealerships not want them? (Honest question, I have no idea about any of this)
There is a hypothesis that dealers disincentivized salespeople from selling EVs due to a lower expected amount of service department revenue in the future. I work in the industry close enough to get a whiff of that and I never heard anything more than speculation.
Dealerships only make money on “the back end”, which is servicing.
Any vehicle that requires less servicing makes them less money, so they don’t want to sell them.
Taking a 7k lb vehicle to the grocery store is beyond dumb. If you can afford that EV, get a small car for in the city.