How Ford, GM auto dealers are thinking about Detroit’s EV transition and their future

After a home, buying a car is the most expensive purchase most consumers will ever make during their lifetime. The transition to electric vehicles by major auto makers is likely to make the process a little more stressful, at least in the early days of the EV era when many consumers are still under-informed on EV basics. If consumers are to be sold on the mass adoption of battery-powered electric vehicles, car dealers are going to be essential to the pitch. It’s the network of franchise auto dealers who provide education, service, and face-to-face sales, so companies like GM and Ford are working closely with them. But it’s a daunting moment for both sides of the car business.

“We haven’t had a shift of this magnitude in the auto industry ever,” said Robb Hernandez, president of Monterey Park, Calif.-based Camino Real Chevrolet. “The ground is still moving beneath dealers making decisions. The automakers are doing their best making this shift, but the regulation is more of the driving force of how we will all have to pivot.”

That includes his home state of California, where 100% of new car sales are mandated to be EVs by 2035.

“I can only speak for GM,” Hernandez said. “They are listening as we make these changes but the landscape is ever-changing at this point,” he said. But he added, “Most auto dealers are optimistic and excited for the changing landscape.”

As of late last year, 65% of Ford’s dealers had opted into the EV certification program (a little under 2,000, according to data shared by Ford), as it has started to make the role of car dealers central to the EV transition process. 

Many consumers want a streamlined process and virtually every transaction today has some online component, according to Brian Maas, president of the California New Car Dealers Association. But with the complicated nature of a vehicle purchase transaction (trade-ins, financing, purchase of extended warranties and other products), a fully online experience will only work for a percentage of car buyers. “The rest will still want to ‘kick the tires’ and take a test drive before investing $50,000+ in the average new car,” he said.

This preference is expected to hold true for EVs. A recent report from the California Air Resources Board (CARB) cites “customer choice,” “vehicle availability,” and “affordability” as keys to mass adoption, all of which require a critical role to be played by dealers.

“I think CARB understands that dealers are essential to the adoption of EVs,” Maas said.

He pointed to several factors. First, and most obvious, outside of Tesla it is franchised dealers who have to explain and sell this new technology to the mass market. Second, all the incentives adopted federally and in states such as California are administered by or through dealers. And finally, EVs won’t approach affordability in the short term without dealers making these funds available to consumers and explaining how these programs work at the point of purchase.

Kerrigan Advisors, which works with dealership groups on sales and acquisitions, noted that Ford, relative to some top global competitors, has a relatively large dealership network to manage through the EV transition. “To some, Ford’s approach is a way to weed out the smaller dealers who are unwilling to make the EV investment,” said Erin Kerrigan, founder and managing director. “Keep in mind Ford has over 3,000 franchises in the U.S.,” Kerrigan said. “By contrast, Toyota has only 1,482 and sells more vehicles than Ford.”

But she expects more Ford dealers will opt in at a future date, once they observe a meaningful consumer shift to EVs.

But specific concerns from dealers, expressed to Ford, offer a window into the desire on the part of the dealers to also ask for deepening commitment from Ford as part of their own commitment to the e-certification program. One issue has been dealer reluctance to offer public charging at their locations and asking Ford to up its own investment in public charging, even though dealers are aware the OEMs are spending billions on factories for new EVs and batteries.

Dealers are prepared to offer charging for new vehicles to be sold on their lot and vehicles being serviced. But OEMs asking dealerships to serve as public charging stations has led to pushback. “Tesla pays for its supercharging network, yes with lots of taxpayer subsidies, but they pay,” Maas said. “Dealers are in the business of selling and servicing cars, not selling electrons,” he said. While future business cases may prove that dealers can make money from charging, Maas noted that the selling of electrons is heavily regulated by public utility commissions across the country. “Maybe dealers just want to sell and service cars,” he said. “I haven’t been to a dealership that sells gasoline.” 

Notably, Ford announced a deal with Tesla last week to use its charging network, which surprised some EV experts given the competitive nature of the market, but also placed more pressure on GM to increase charging options.

Charging is a big issue, but not the only issue for dealers.

“While 24/7 public charging has perhaps garnered the most attention, there are numerous program features that we have asked Ford to modify or eliminate,” Maas said. 

Dozens of state dealer trade associations have challenged Ford on multiple aspects of its EV certification program, including its basic legality relative to state law about franchise models.

Auto makers reliant on the franchise model have a financial incentive to control more of the margin that will be available in the EV market, and have learned from watching the margin profile and quality control enjoyed by Tesla’s direct-to-consumer model.

“We have to change our cost profile,” Ford CEO Jim Farley told CNBC in February. 

Ford’s approach to selling EVs in some ways is trying to mimic Tesla’s which gives the company more control over standards from store to store than can be achieved through Ford’s traditional franchise model.

There is always tension between franchisors and franchisees, and all states have franchise laws to try and balance the relationship, and where individual dealers and dealer associations are pushing back is where they feel OEMs are using the EV transition as a way to make asks they never would have made previously. That is not limited to charging, but OEM programs dictating how consumers can reserve EVs, and prescribing how EVs have to be sold, dealer trade-in programs, and service contracts.

“Dealers generally chafe at manufacturer requirements that intrude on their ability to sell to their customers,” Maas said. “OEMs make cars and the dealer buys them at wholesale and the dealer sells. Why should that change because it’s powered by electricity? There’s nothing magic about the fact that it is powered by electricity,” he said.

Dealers are gaining a larger share of EV sales, totaling almost 260,000 units in 2022, according to NADA, and dealers capturing 35% of the new EV market by the end of the year. “We expect this to continue as more BEV models are released by the legacy OEMs in the coming years,” NADA said in its annual report.

“The smartest dealers are trying to figure out where this is going and make decisions both for their family and investment in the business,” Maas said. “Ultimately, it will be up to consumers to tell the dealers and OEMs and the larger market what’s going to happen, because if consumers buy these vehicles in huge numbers it’s a signal to the market we need to respond. But if they don’t buy at the pace CARB has set, then some adjustments have to be made.”