{"id":83298,"date":"2025-08-25T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-08-25T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/autosector.com\/?p=83298"},"modified":"2025-08-25T11:00:00","modified_gmt":"2025-08-25T15:00:00","slug":"car-dealer-lobby-sues-new-ev-brands-to-ensure-you-have-a-bad-time-buying-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/?p=83298","title":{"rendered":"Car dealer lobby sues new EV brands to ensure you have a bad time buying them"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Car dealers, who have long been a roadblock in the rollout of EVs in the US, are continuing with their old tricks and filing lawsuits against new spinoff EV brands, like Sony Honda\u2019s Afeela and VW\u2019s Scout, which had hoped to extricate themselves from the dealership model.<\/p>\n

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Ever since the beginning of the EV revolution in the US, car dealerships have been a thorn in the side of progress.<\/p>\n

Across the US, there are laws requiring automakers to sell cars through franchised dealerships. These laws originate from the early days of the automotive industry, when they also allowed car companies to scale their sales networks much more rapidly in the early days of the car boom in the US. And after setting up these franchises, it wouldn\u2019t be particularly fair for automakers to be able to come in and undercut them, so the cat is sort of out of the bag at this point.<\/p>\n

In their most optimistic portrayal<\/a>, they also ensure that repairs are readily available across the country, that competition for sales helps keep prices down, and that manufacturers can\u2019t throw their weight around and unfairly control the market.<\/p>\n

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But as is the case with most legislatively mandated middle-men, it hasn\u2019t all been rosy. Every American knows that the car purchasing process is time consuming, hostile, full of tricks and of dealership personnel who have much more interest in earning a commission than in providing accurate information about the model you\u2019ve come in asking questions about. Car dealers are routinely ranked as among the least-trusted profession in America (with the second-lowest positive trust rating, behind lobbyists, in this year\u2019s Gallup survey<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Worse, when it comes to EVs, car dealers are often ignorant or outright hostile<\/a>, and this pattern has been consistent (though slowly improving) for the more than a decade since EVs have been available to the US car buying public. Many EV purchasers have permanently sworn off dealers as a result of the comparatively better experience they\u2019ve gotten when purchasing vehicles from one of the EV startups like, Tesla, Rivian or Lucid.<\/p>\n

But the dealer lobby has long caused difficulty for these startups. Despite each of these being new companies with no franchised dealers, certain states have laws disallowing them from selling car on their own. They need to seek loopholes or ship in cars from out of state in order to sell cars over the internet, and dealerships keep lobbying to change laws to make it more difficult for new companies. There is a long and complicated history of these disputes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And just like every objectively good thing<\/a> in today\u2019s world, the EV\/dealership battle has taken on a political angle<\/a>, with the party that\u2019s only interested in doing bad things unsurprisingly choosing to do bad things in this case as well. (And, oddly enough, the bad CEO<\/a> of the largest EV company in America gave hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes<\/a> to the party which wants to eliminate EVs<\/a> \u2013 and which is allied with the Tesla\u2019s most significant enemy over its history: the auto dealers).<\/p>\n

But the dealerships\u2019 opposition doesn\u2019t just end at startup EV brands \u2013 they\u2019re now voicing their opposition to EVs from large manufacturers\u2019 new spinoff brands, and the opposition might end up being even more fervent in this case.<\/p>\n