{"id":33960,"date":"2022-06-02T19:15:19","date_gmt":"2022-06-02T19:15:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/ford-ceo-wants-to-abolish-the-dealership-experience-as-we-know-it\/"},"modified":"2022-06-02T19:15:19","modified_gmt":"2022-06-02T19:15:19","slug":"ford-ceo-wants-to-abolish-the-dealership-experience-as-we-know-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/ford-ceo-wants-to-abolish-the-dealership-experience-as-we-know-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Ford CEO Wants to Abolish the Dealership Experience as We Know It"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Ford wants to do things differently<\/em> as it expands into the EV business. It’s spinning electric cars into their own sub-brand<\/span>, untethered from the time-honored tradition<\/span> of dealers asking “What can I do to get you in this car today?” Months after that news first came out, CEO Jim Farley is doubling down. In a speech today, the executive confirmed that under his new plan di lui, dealerships would get rid of inventory entirely and become high-quality service centers for customers who purchased their vehicles online.<\/p>\n

In a presentation at Bernstein’s 38th Annual Strategic Decisions Conference<\/span>, an event that is apparently real and not an Arrested Development plot point, Farley confirmed that Ford intends to sell EVs entirely online, with no-haggle pricing. Dealer lots full of pre-ordered inventory would be gone, and today’s existing dealers would pivot to providing service for cars purchased online.<\/p>\n

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Crucially, Farley framed this move as a goal<\/em> rather than a definitive plan. His words of him, reported by the Detroit Free Press<\/em><\/span>: \u201cWe’ve got to go to non-negotiated price. We’ve got to go to 100% online. There’s no inventory … 100% remote pickup and delivery. ” <\/p>\n

Buyers looking to get into a Lightning may have to deal with dealers for now, but future transactions may never require a single foot stepped into those hallowed halls. It seems the goal is to have dealers process the transaction initiated by the customer via the online sales portal – no more stepping onto the sales floor or entering the dreaded box<\/span>. Farley said existing dealerships will play a role in this transition, with the company using its \u201cphysical presence\u201d to \u201coutperform\u201d startups like Tesla, which have had to build physical showrooms and service locations from zero.<\/p>\n

In comments reported by Bloomberg<\/span>, Farley also outlined his plan to eliminate Ford’s advertising spending entirely. The automaker is one of the biggest purchasers of advertising on earth, spending more than $ 3 billion a year on ads. But Ford didn’t buy any ads for its two new electric vehicles, the Mustang Mach-E and the F-150 Lightning, and both of those are sold out. When it comes to EVs, “I’m not convinced we need public advertising,” Farley said, as reported by Bloomberg<\/span>. <\/p>\n

A fully digital purchase experience may prevent buyers from putting eyes on cars and butts in seats before shelling out their hard-earned cash, but that’s a problem that people seem to care about less with every passing year. Digital sales make up nearly a third of car transactions in the United States<\/span>and that’s unlikely to ever return to pre-pandemic levels. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Photo: Bill Pugliano (Getty Images) Ford wants to do things differently as it expands into the EV business. It’s spinning electric cars into their own sub-brand, untethered from the time-honored tradition of dealers asking “What can I do to get you in this car today?” Months after that news first came out, CEO Jim Farley …<\/p>\n

Ford CEO Wants to Abolish the Dealership Experience as We Know It<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"default","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[8],"tags":[3237,116,16358,650,559,483,653,646,16359,131,668,666,805,16360,130,560],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/i.kinja-img.com\/gawker-media\/image\/upload\/c_fill,f_auto,fl_progressive,g_center,h_675,pg_1,q_80,w_1200\/5c090c9f2b4a168b50266204dbdb5e62.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33960"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33960"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33960\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}