Service does vary by model. My e-tron, for example, has a motor coolant change at 20k miles that isn’t super trivial.
My Etron was in the shop a lot for various recalls and issues
Well, ok, but that in theory isn’t “scheduled maintenance”.
Mine has also been in once for “unscheduled maintenance”.
It’s the same logic as my earlier reply. You are not going to see Kona or Niro offerings in the Marketplace here if there aren’t any Hyundai or Kia brokers. And you’re not going to see too many brokers sign up to represent brands that don’t incentivize leases much. Last I checked they were in the 20s for leases as a % of their sales while BMW was 50+
Sounds like a bs service tbh. Theres no reason a car needs coolant every 20k miles. Sounds like mb brake fluid flushes that the dealers dont do even when you pay that are due every 20k miles.
It’s the coolant for the ev thermal management. Isn’t traditional coolant. It’s also a large part of why the e-tron is able to hold so much higher charging rates at higher states of charge and is less effected by outside temperatures than everything else in the market. Seems like something worth maintaining.
Also, pretty much every car recommends a 2-3 year brake fluid flush schedule, because typically that’s how long it takes for brake fluid to absorb touch water. Most people don’t change it that often, but they should, even on non-MBs. The dealer, of course, should do it when paid.
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For many dealers, it will be in the multiple millions if they are planning in installing mutiple 150+ kW stations.
This is really the problem. It is difficult enough to have a lot porter wash a car. Imagine them trying to schedule charging, especially as more EVs start to cycle through inventory. We have 1 EV charging station for sales and it isn’t fast (maybe 20 kW). Service has a fast charger (I think 150 kW) and another 30 kW. We are installing 3 public stations plus a few more for internal use. It isn;t much of a problem now since it is just the Taycan, but I can only imagine how much of a mad house it will be once the Macan goes full EV.
This right here. The Taycan needs brake fluid and a cabin air filter change after two years compared to the additional oil and filter changes that an ICE needs. I think as EVs become more popular and service not as profitable, the price of new cars will reflect that. Dealer groups are going to find that missing revenue somewhere.
This is also a huge challenge. Some of the old timers struggle with the new tech and I will admit even for me it was a struggle when I first started. Plus deliveries are so much more time consuming and complicated. A Taycan probably takes twice as long to deliver to a client than a Cayenne due to all the new charging tech and apps. A lot of manufacturers want dealers to use a product specialist (think BMW Genius) who show, deliver, and provide after sales support and “advisors” who close the deals and complete paperwork (so your sales person and FI manager is one person).
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Been thinking some more on this (danger alert). Seems to me dealers need a hybrid system to pull this off. Invest in several conventional DCFast stations, but also leverage solar panel installations and a cell pack management system. It could work like this: 1) Begin DCFast on several in stock EVs, once fully charged, they get transferred to the management system (let’s call this the ‘chain’). The chain exists to both receive solar power, and spread it to the chained EV’s, and when EV’s need a charge, they get it form other EV’s in the chain. Essentially you are creating an off-grid DCFast charger using solar panels and banking those electrons in the existing EV cell packs, then leveraging those packs for charging incoming EV’s. The conventional 3 phase is essentially a seeder and a fallback (nights/shady/stormy days). Much like an off-grid home, cell packs allow time-shift of electrons, and the storage already exists on the lots as EV cell packs…they just need to be leveraged/managed.
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Can all EVs do this currently? I mean supply power back when needed, and if so are they protected from over-drain, surges, etc? I know Ford is making a whole to-do out of Lightning being able to run a house from a battery, but that’s an upcoming vehicle.
It also requires a special charger that runs on 80 amp service, with 100 amps recommended for overhead. I think this kind of grid is a cool idea but as a customer, especially a customer who isn’t leasing I don’t know how I would feel about my battery being used on the lot in such a way. Personally I think that the automakers here have gone about things all wrong. If batteries were leased on all vehicles and/or (heaven forbid) standardized it would be possible to develop a robust network where you could just roll up to a service station and swap your battery, similar to what Nio was working on in China.
While the idea seems cool, it could lead to issues and I feel it would go against American ownership mentality. The only analogy I can think of is every time I swap a propane tank for my grill I keep running a risk of getting one with messed up valve, or not filled correctly, or abused and could be dangerous. The number of times I got home and the valve was leaking on open position and had to be re-swapped was insane. I now it’s not exactly the same thing, but with any swap you really don’t know what you are getting.
There’s definitely some issues there. It would open up a can of worms with warranties, counterfeit or unauthorized batteries, etc. We run that risk with gasoline though, no? Nobody seems to have an issue with being able to use the fuel of their choosing within manufacturer specs. I don’t have to go to a Shell station to fill up if Exxon is closer/cheaper. And people get bad batches of gas sometimes. What I would like to see would be more controlled than that anyway. Either a manufacturer specific setup where you could pull up to a dealer and get a swap or a universal system that would require some kind of authentication and quality control. The big obstacle would be implementing it in a way that doesn’t compromise the vehicle. Everyone has moved onto the skateboard style platforms which would make this kind of setup difficult and costly to pull off.
The warranty wouldn’t be an issue if the battery is considered to be on par with gasoline, as in has nothing to do with the vehicle. Although I’m not sure if a bad batch of gasoline messes up a fuel pump or clogs up a filter, is that warranty or damage?
It would be interesting if it could be pulled off in general, but historically any form of DRM has been defeated. HP made their printers verify cartridges, and very quickly we had remanufactured cartridges that read as genuine HP. Keurig home machines were defeated with a sticker. Sony DVD protection was defeated with a sharpie. If there is ever a “war” of component authentication between OEMs and knockoffs, my money is on knockoffs.
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This is trending pretty off topic, but a few points:
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GM has some pretty intense DRM in their “BCM” unit. Essentially, Chevy has a DRM that prevents you from adding any components to your vehicle that were not originally sold on the VIN. This prevents someone that got a Camaro LT1 lease deal here from adding, say, the electronic limited-slip-diff from a ZL1 trim to their lesser model. Or it prevents someone from adding the fancy trailering/towing features to their truck that didn’t order the “max tow package”.
The technical implementation here is pretty strong, and if you search through Chevy forums and people trying to mod their vehicles, everyone has come up short on mods that require a reprogram of the BCM. The car will “lock out” anything that GM did not want you to add to it. Component authentication is in full force today, and companies like GM and John Deere have invested enough in the political campaign as well as the technology, to keep knockoffs and aftermarkets out. They’re succeeding today, and most of their cars are Internet connected to receive updates, so future updates could come out to keep knockoffs away, even if third parties crack the cryptographic lock in Chevy’s BCM. Constant cat-and-mouse. The current implementation has been ironclad for the past 5+ years or so. -
I think we’ve well-established that dealers will have to make a significant investment to charge EVs at scale. At least hundreds of thousands of dollars, but it can easily scale into the millions based on desired capacity and dealer location/electrical service. Whether it’s paying more porters, upgrading their panel for more 40amp breakers for level 2 charging, dragging some thick and expensive copper cables on telephone poles to support DCFC, or investing millions in batteries and solar panels (you need something like 30 panels per level 2 charger, so you’d need like 200-250 panels per DCFC charge stall, not sure if dealership roofs are big enough for this), you can’t outrun the physics of how much power you need to charge the cars. Dealers need to spend a hefty six-figure investment to sell more than 30 EV’s a month, no matter how you slice it. Copper is expensive, and all options to scaling up dealer’s EV charge capacity involve buying more raw copper (for wires), to run more current through. Any wire to charge an EV is gonna be a lot thicker than the wire needed to charge your cell phone.
None of this has much to do with OP’s original question of “why can’t I find lower lease prices on EVs in my state?” - for which the answer is really simple: “other people value the EVs enough to pay more for them than your budget allows, so the dealers would just rather sell the stock they have to the people that are willing to pay more than you are”. It’s really hard for the customer to argue with that logic when the cars are flying off the shelves.
And… welll… the historical way that we find “good deals” on cars is when the supply exceeds the demand for cars. So we can hope that some more dealerships up their infrastructure game, so that they can stock more cars and create more opportunities for unicorn deals.
How do you have all of this time to publish tomes on LH???
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You keep repeating the same things over and over again with ever increasing number of words. Can you add TL;DR sections to your posts?
But frankly, since you seem to know what dealerships should do more than dealerships, have you ever considered opening one? You have a knack for long speeches, put that into a business plan, clearly you think it’s solid through and through so the bank should have no issue giving you a loan to start your own EV focused dealerships. Seeing how a ton of GM dealers took a buyout, GM would be very happy to authorize you see you how you are so all in on the EV thing.
Or you could consider that there are way more factors in play than you are seeing? Here are just some of the considerations that COULD be happening:
- a lot of smaller dealers are waiting for their own buyouts from either groups or manufacturers, as they made their money and have no desire to restart a whole new “adventure” with EVs
- some are watching which way the wind will blow, and maybe the government will offer incentives to build infrastructure. Anyone who builds it now, won’t get any money back from any future handouts
- The manufacturers are not providing enough of an incentive / push to have dealerships do anything beyond what they are doing
Not enough hyundai EVs at $2500 over list selling to be able to open own dealership.
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Not for nothing, if it weren’t for dealer franchise agreements this would actually be a pretty cool idea. A dealer that focuses solely on EVs from several manufacturers only.
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Basically, I made the decision to double-down on my broker business, right before the inventory shortages. So while I’d prefer to be blowing out cars below invoice, as my day-to-day, it’s going to be some time before demand climbs back up to where it was. The timing was not great, but you can’t predict the future. I’m grateful I got the timing right last year, and now I’m here and this is what I’m doing.
I’m using the meantime to learn more about the impending change in the business. And I like discussing these topics with other people that are passionate about them, to get a better understanding of what both customers and dealerships are looking for in the future.
This is a community first; I only became a broker because I was welcomed by the community and flooded with requests from seemingly like-minded people. I’m here to align my personal success with the growth of EVs - I don’t think trying to open a franchise dealership in NJ is the best way for me to do that. I know I’m making an impact on the market today, and my current business model is way lower overhead.
I’ll answer as many questions as I can, to get the facts that help EV adoption out there.
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