Plan To Sell Scout Vehicles Directly To The Public Has California Volkswagen Dealers Hopping Mad

Good. We need to end the dealership model of car sales being required in most states.

If dealerships are pissed, I can almost guarantee that this will be good for the consumer.

Dealerships can get fucked. They are a cancer on American society, and nobody wants them.

Fuck 'em.

Maybe dealerships served a purpose at one point, but today they are totally unnecessary. They are needless middlemen who exist only to jack up the price of vehicles.

Edit: this is the bullshit that needs to be undone. Dealerships should not be protected by unnecessary laws that force consumers and producers to use them.

Autoblog reports that the California New Car Dealers Association claims the direct sales strategy violates a 2023 amendment to California’s State Vehicle Code which prevents automakers and their affiliates from bypassing their franchise dealerships.

I have a friend who is related to a guy who owns ~12 car dealerships and that guy is FILTHY rich. As in: 3rd home in Telluride CO is a 5,000sf “cabin.” Owns two small yachts.

But also, imagine a job market suddenly flooded by car salespeople… shudders

Fuck the stealerships.

All Carsalesmen Are Bastards. Defund the dealerships.

These connections, the association contends, make Scout an affiliate of Volkswagen rather than an independent startup like Tesla. A crucial difference may be that Tesla is grandfathered in the 2023 amendment to the California law whereas Scout Motors is not. In addition, Tesla had no existing vehicle manufacturing operation when it began selling electric cars.

Ah, that's why there's an issue.

The amount of typos in the cease and desist letter is staggering. I cannot imagine any lawyer could produce that, must be copied by the apprentice journalist on duty, with a tight deadline.

The only potential downside I see to plans like this are warranty service. As long as they have s way to ensure covered break-fix and recall support, let’s do it.

If you really want to make a successful utilitarian line of EV trucks you need a DC V2L standard capable of delivering 10 kW or more. Maybe something like USB-C PD with communication lines reduced in number and the power wires bumped up to 10 or 8 gauge wire. That would enable you to make BLDC-powered truck accessories that perform better and are cheaper than gas-powered alternatives.

For example, a BLDC powered wood chipper with a 5 kW motor could chip branches up to 5” or 6” and, due to the nearly flat torque curve, it wouldn’t stall out and need to be unclogged like a gas-powered version. Log-splitters, post-hole diggers, saw-mills, etc. that are powered by small gas engines would all be vastly inferior to their EV-powered BLDC counterparts - both in price and performance.

What does this mean? Where else can you buy new cars from but the dealership? Isn't buying from a Volkswagen dealership the same as buying directly from the manufacturer?

An all-new spinoff by VW will almost certainly be horrifically unreliable, so dealers may be dodging a bullet here.

Side eying the casual treatment of car dealership workers like they're insurance people. Everyone's gotta find work somewhere.

As someone involved in the industy I have to wonder if this is more indicative of Volkswagens greater issues than it is a focus on dealerships in general. I do administration for a Toyota dealer and Just a few weeks ago our owner was talking about how both Nissan and Volkswagen are in crisis mode. Nissan then like 2 weeks later, announced a merger with Honda.

Im not up to date on VW's issues because they're more of a european brand, but thats probably half the problem, they used to be fairly prominent in north america. but they just stopped making cars that people wanted to buy. I guess