You are correct that NJ is well-positioned to become the best EV leasing state in the country.
You are also correct that there is this notion of “EV friendliness” as it pertains to dealerships. Only about 2% of the cars on the road in the US are EVs, and it’s no secret that dealerships have a habit of continuing to do business the same way they have for 50+ years, so for a lot of dealerships it’s as simple as “it’s not worth such a small percentage of our business to cater to these niche cars that we don’t understand”.
So you get into this cycle, which is, I think, a lot of the same reason why you don’t see bright “skittles rainbow” of cars on dealer lots. Dealers tend to order black/white/silver/grey and a few red, as that’s what historically sells, so that’s what dealers order, so that’s what manufacturers build.
With the EVs, the cycle is more like:
- Dealer has very few EVs on lot, prices are high, advertising is low, they don’t sell
- Manufacturer starts upping incentives to move old inventory
- “Crazy good” lease deal on EVs become popular
- Dealers get flooded with calls for the sub-$100 car payment with a $39k sticker that they couldn’t move at all last month
- Dealers react to the “demand” too late, because now all the dealers at once wish they had a few more cars on order, but the factory/port/dealer trades run dry quickly.
- Dealers eventually get more cars, but programs could expire, leaving them stuck with undesirable inventory again
So, you really do need dealers to “see the light” at scale and realize that they need to sit on more EV inventory. My businss model as a broker is built around this concept; I’ve been operating for 1 year and I’ve successfully convinced a few dealerships to see that EVs are a worthwhile investment for their growth. It’s not easy to convince dealer inventory managers to tie up a million dollars worth of floor plan or capital for every 30 EVs they stock. But slowly, the dominos will start to fall, as a few of the higher-volume dealerships get more aggressive with the percentage of their inventory that’s devoted to being EV.
You mention e-tron and other deals, but during November December 2020, my model was demonstrated to work, and a few dealers did really go in on EV inventory, which enabled competition between them, which enabled the $92/month Ioniq EV deal. Unfortunately market conditions did not get us there again in 2021, but I do think that deal will eventually start to become commonplace as EV competition heats up here in NJ!