We guess you are interested in how well traditional dealers sell electric vehicles in the U.S. Well, it's a good question. The latest survey involved 174 participants who visited 308 car dealerships and stores that represented 13 different automakers in 10 ZEV states. Some of the volunteers even bought an EV during the process. Volunteers were asked to rate their overall experience with the dealership on a five-point scale where 1 was “very negative” and 5 was “very positive”.
The results are mostly predictable – although maybe slightly better then the low expectations we had heading into the survey. Tesla stores received the highest marks overall – as really their only product is an electric one. Audi yielded no negative impressions, while BMW had a strong 2nd place showing – which makes sense considering the German brand now has 5 different models to offer this month (the 740e just arrived in August), and plug-in sales this summer have accounted for 1 in every 10 BMW sales overall.
At 1 in 7 dealerships, the electric vehicles on site were not sufficiently charged for a test drive. There was also a one-in-three chance that the dealer didn't bring up either federal or state tax rebates, which many plug-in vehicle buyers could qualify for. Half of the dealers didn't provide instruction on how to properly recharge an EV. Dealerships were recommended to brush up on their EV knowledge, keep more EVs in stock, and do a better job showing prospective buyers both how to recharge EVs and how to generate tax rebates from them.