Go spend some time chatting with some machine shops and such. There’s a whole subset of people that run 3 phase into their home garages.
I suspect you’re running more into electricians trying to get you to pay the tesla tax than anything.
3 Likes
Can you please provide a reference here?! I’ve seen people with crazy welders and compressors but those are still only 240V.
Who are the people getting 3-phase at their residences, and how do I find them?!
I asked an electrician if it was possible to get it in my residential neighborhood, and he said it’s just not on the pole in my neighborhood. They’d have to run it from the nearest industrial area.
There’s no dealer that NEEDS DCFC or anything like that to effectively sell EVs. Additional 220v service shouldn’t be that expensive and neither are Level 2 chargers. They can be plugged in overnight that way.
2 Likes
They tend to hang out on places like cnczone
Exactly. The idea that a dealership would hold themselves back because they didn’t want to install a half dozen level 2 chargers is just ridiculous.
I can get not wanting to install a dcfc in some areas where the infrastructure is extremely limiting, but a handful of level 2 chargers is incredibly trivial compared to all the machinery that’s already in the service department.
2 Likes
Problem comes when the car in the color the customer wants isn’t charged. The cars discharge if they’ve been sitting on the lot too long.
If you’re really pumping these things, and selling them by the truckload with a low market day supply, the logistics do get tricky. DCFC can be the difference between “you can drive it home tonight, it’s charging to 100% while you wait in F&I” and “you’ll have to take delivery tomorrow”.
I work with dealers that only have L2 charging, and also dealers that have DCFC. At 40+ EV units sold per month, you’re gonna want the fast charger. It’s possible to get away with not having it, but that experience sucks, and dealer employees will forget to plug in the cars.
If you want to be a high-volume dealer that’s doing 200 EVs per month, I don’t see it happening without DCFC onsite.
Not to mention the incentives available for solar power, and the usually large and sun exposed roofs of dealerships and service bays. These investments can pay for themselves.
2 Likes
How long is too long though? Last I checked my currently unused Bolt LT has been sitting parked for about 4 months and has been holding steady around 170 miles of range. I can’t remember the last time I charged it.
2 Likes
You might also look into pricing on phase converters (I have no clue the actual cost of these)
I don’t really know, I just know that I’ve seen more Hyundai EVs arrive at dealerships with dead or nearly-dead batteries than I have seen them with full batteries. They usually don’t get charged until the customer is ready to take them home.
These are all very easy problems to solve, but trust me when I say that most dealerships are not thinking about solving them, and don’t think they’re important problems to solve at this time.
I predict that dealerships will continue to employee lazy people for some time to come, and somehow there’s always going to be a customer that’s interested in the car with a dead battery.
Hell, dealerships can’t even keep the 12V batteries on their ICE inventory topped off.
And that’s kinda the point of the thread, most dealerships simply do not give a shit. There are more “EV unfriendly” dealers than “EV friendly” dealers.
There are a tons of suggestions in here on things that dealers could be doing if they wanted to be more EV friendly, but they don’t want it yet, so they’re not going to do any of those things until market forces compel them to. And even then, some may do nothing and go out of business.
They ship them with a reduced state of charge in the battery. Isn’t good for battery longevity to store the vehicle at full charge for a long period of time.
They certainly should charge the vehicles up somewhat when they get them though. Storing them with 60ish% in the battery and then throwing it on a lvl 2 charger to push it up to 80% while in f&I wouldn’t be unreasonable.
2 Likes
While I acknowledge that this can be a problem for a lot of potential customers, I took delivery of my Bolt Premier with about 30 miles of range since it was spur of the moment. I didn’t really care since I was getting the deal I wanted. I also had a ride back home if it didn’t work out so I could have just come back for it the next day. If the deal sucks then I’m obviously not going to put up with that but it is possible that a dealership could offer a loaner in these types of situations. It’s not ideal, but if you are giving people a good deal they would be most likely be willing to be more flexible. Having a real internet sales department can definitely help with this kind of stuff too. If you are actually selling cars, giving quotes, making deals and scheduling pickups and deliveries online it’s much easier to coordinate charging the cars. If a dealership is just using their internet department to get foot traffic it makes it more challenging to manage this stuff.
1 Like
Here you have it almost right, for dealers part problem is not willing to change and adopt to current realities, but EV’s are still out there just volumes are less. And as I mentioned I spend for example few hours yesterday to check on new Leaf pricing, sure enough brokers can do this, but they seems are also not willing to. Again not asking for unicorn here, but just decent deal without shenanigans will do
I think your problem is there are just people out there in your locale that are willing to pay more for the Leaf than you are. Maybe dealers could sell it at your price if they really wanted to. But, they have enough people coming in willing to give them, say $2000 more than your price, that they don’t want to extend a better offer to either you, or the brokers you’re working with. The only counter to this is if the dealers have way more Leafs in stock than they have customers for. Then you get some leverage to ask a discount. But if you ask for your price and they say “nah, we’d rather sell it for more to someone else” and then they actually do sell it for more to someone else, why bother giving you a “decent deal”?
…the only way I see is better pricing on EVs becoming the norm is… to promote the dealer maintaining a larger EV inventory, such that they have more EVs than people that want them, such that they have an incentive to offer dealer discounts instead of dealer markups.
I think they are adopting to reality in a way… most dealers make more money from their service department than they do from vehicle sales. EVs require much less maintenance so there are much fewer opportunities to make money servicing them. Additionally the ability to service them requires capital improvements to their service departments as well as additional training for their technicians or hiring additional techs that are already trained. So we’re already starting off in a position that requires spending money to possibly lose money, or at least take a long time to make it back. When you combine that reality with the fact that sales departments need additional training (or hiring of “specialists”) in order to be able to overcome customer objections and reservations, it’s no wonder that there is some resistance and laziness from dealers.
1 Like
Am I the only person who sees this as a huge business opportunity? A dealer could sell DCFast packages as a value-ad…like some EV manufactures currently. Extra foot traffic/upsell opportunities,etc.
I remember going to test drive a Civic Sport hatch once and the only manual transmission car they had was less than “E” on the fuel tank. No one on the lot could drive a manual, so I had to drive the car to the gas station down the street to fill it up for the dealership.
If this is the sorry state of car prep at dealerships, I’m not surprised they don’t want to invest in EV infrastructure or even bother having a lot attendant plug and unplug their EV inventory. The batteries don’t discharge over night and managing a charge schedule for their incoming inventory on a few level 2 chargers isn’t hard. If I can manage several hundreds of individuals doing training on an excel spreadsheet, a service manager can manage which stock numbers have been charged and when. It’s not hard, it’s basic project management.
4 Likes
And be profitable.
1 Like
I thought that as well, but few days ago I actually saw study, which say EV cost more to service Study: EVs cost more to service than ICE vehicles
And when they are new, basically manufacturer paying dealer for those extra hours
I read that article and it’s just a click baity title. They cost mich less to service, because they dont need any service. Their current warranty cost is higher than ice cars, but thats to be expected considering most evs are new models and warranty costs are higher with new re designs.
I’m not planning on ever taking my bolt to a chevy dealership for my 3 year lease. If I decide to rotate the tires, I’ll do it myself. Ill see after 2 years if it even needs a rotation. Doubt it will have enough miles to need it. Thats the only service electric cars need btw, tire rotations which you dont have to do abd windshield wipers that you dont have to do…
1 Like