Many Car Dealers Don't Want To Sell Electric Cars: Here's Why

The stories abound: A car buyer walks into a dealership, educated about the electric car she wants to buy...and the salesperson tries to convince her she doesn't want that car after all.

She really wants a gasoline car, he argues.

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

Hundreds of cases have been reported of customers walking into a Nissan or Chevy dealer to buy a Leaf or Volt, then being aggressively steered toward a Sentra or Cruze.

Doom, danger, dire predictions

A buyer will run out of charge and be left stranded at the side of the road, he hears, or that very expensive battery will have to be replaced in five years.

Then the electric demo car hasn't been recharged, so its electric range is minimal on the test drive. And so forth.

A recent discussion in a Facebook group prompted us to write, once more, about how car dealers work--and what motivates them to sell specific vehicles.

The salient point is that it takes much longer to sell a plug-in electric car, today, than it does a gasoline or diesel vehicle.

Maximizing profit

And dealers maximize their profits by exploiting the difference in information about complex financial transactions between buyers who do it once every five or six years, on average, and salespeople who sell multiple cars a day.

MORE: Toyota Dealers Not Interested In Selling Electric Cars, Prefer Hybrids

As we wrote two months ago in another article on dealers:

Every salesperson's mission is to close the deal, today, at maximum profit with minimum time invested. Selling a plug-in car takes three to five times as long for a dealer as does selling a gasoline car.

It requires explanation, education, training, all of the fuss and bother associated with installing a charging station in the garage if the buyer wants one, and so on.

And, today's electric-car shoppers often know as much or more about their desired plug-in model as the salesperson does. To get their questions answered, several other people may have to be brought into the process. And that takes time.