Ford CEO Jim Farley announced that he wants the company’s EVs to be sold exclusively online, sans any dealer markups or other price negotiations.
“We’ve got to go to a non-negotiated price. We’ve got to go 100 percent online. There’s no inventory (at dealerships), it goes directly to the customer. And 100 percent remote pickup and delivery,” Farley said at a conference in New York.
The shift away from dealerships is expected to save Ford money as the car manufacturing company says that its current distribution model pads an extra $2,000 cost per car compared to Tesla. A third of that cost comes from inventory, and another third is tied to advertising.
“Our model is messed up. We spend $600 or $700 on the vehicle to promote it, and we spend nothing post-warranty on the customer experience. The problem is, on a parts business, which historically has been very profitable, we only get, maybe, only 10 or 20 percent of the customers come back to us,” he said.
For more information, read the original story in Arstechnica.