Why Some Dealers Are Inept At Selling Plug-In Electric Cars

People tend to recall bad or frustrating experiences more acutely than good ones.

Which is likely why a staple of plug-in car forums is the bad-treatment-at-a-car-dealership story.

Anecdotes abound about Chevrolet and Nissan dealers who tried to pull Volt and Leaf buyers away from plug-in electrics into gasoline cars.

Or said, "Your battery will go dead and you'll be stuck on the side of the road."

Or knew nothing at all about Federal, state, or local incentives--from tax credits to purchase rebates, from free charging to carpool-lane access--that make owning a plug-in car easier.

Or consistently block access to their "publicly available" charging station with gasoline vehicles.The stories go on and on.

So it's important for all potential car buyers to understand how dealers operate, so they can be better prepared before they walk through the dealership doors.

The first thing to realize is that the salespeople at the dealer do not work for the carmaker. They work for independent third-party businesses, over which the carmakers have limited control.

In most states, auto companies are specifically banned by law from selling cars to retail buyers.Automakers would dearly love to have more direct say over the dealership experience, of course, because it reflects directly on their brand.

But auto-dealer groups have worked closely with state politicians throughout the country to get laws enacted to protect existing franchised dealers against company-owned competition.

While carmakers can set certain conditions under which dealers are allocated specific types of cars, they can't--in the end--control the sales experience.

As many dealers complain, those experiences are generally shared only when they're bad.

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