Pub 6 2021 Issue 1

22 The Big Lie A s someone who has dedicated his career to advocating on behalf of America’s franchised auto dealers, I’ve embraced the reality that one of my chief roles is to serve as Myth Buster In Chief. For years, one of the great myths that have persisted about the auto industry has been that franchised dealers don’t want to sell electric vehicles. It’s long past time to put this myth out to pasture. And it’s time to call it out for what it is: A lie about franchised dealers, propagated by the handful of companies that want to destroy the franchise system. Before we get into why this myth persists and why it’s morphed into such a blatant lie, let’s acknowledge something right at the outset. More than a decade ago, there was indeed some dealer uneasiness about battery-electric vehicles. The EVs of the early and mid-2000s were — let’s face it — by and large compliance cars. They had inadequate range, took forever and were a pain to recharge, did not perform well, had terrible resale value and were extremely expensive. But it wasn’t that dealers didn’t want to sell them to willing customers. Dealers didn’t want to be force-fed vehicles that OEMs were manufacturing largely in response to regulatory pressures as opposed to actual market demand. Given the imbalance in the OEM-dealer relationship, which gives dealers little capacity to avoid any such OEM force-feeding, you can hardly blame dealers for this early trepidation. But that was a long, long time ago. The world has changed considerably, these vehicles have changed considerably, and they are hardly compliance cars any longer. The level of investment and commitment that traditional automakers have made in battery-electric technology is night-and-day different from what it was even five years ago, and it shows in the product. Several other things have also changed. Across the country, more charging stations with faster-charging capability are popping up almost every day, and the federal government may appropriate billions of dollars to grow the nation’s recharging infrastructure significantly. On top of this, we are rapidly approaching price parity. Owning an EV for the long haul is now a vastly different proposition than it used to be. These are hugely positive developments. One other major thing that has changed dramatically over the years? Dealer attitudes toward selling and servicing EVs. Franchised dealers aren’t at all EV-reluctant and haven’t been for years. And they certainly aren’t anti-EV. Anyone that tells you differently just isn’t telling the truth. B y Mike Stanton, president and CEO of the National Automobile Dealers Association