'They Want To Be The Gatekeepers': Car Dealers Are Stopping Customers From Buying EVs
'They Want To Be The Gatekeepers': Car Dealers Are Stopping Customers From Buying EVs
As always the devil is in the details. This article is about another article (Washington post, yall ever notice they get a lot of secondary coverage?) referring to a survey conducted by the sierra club (https://www.sierraclub.org/sites/www.sierraclub.org%2Ffiles%2F2023-05%2FSierraClubRevUpReport2023.pdf)
They looked at 800 dealership responses from June to November of 2022. The number of dealerships asked are ratio’d with state population of dealerships. Supposedly this is sufficient statistically but the reality is:
They talked to 800 out of 18,000 franchised dealerships. They didn’t even touch on “private” dealerships which are closer to 60,000.
To imply that even the majority of dealerships are pushing against EV sales seems a bit off. Not the whole story.
For example, I wouldn’t recommend anyone buy an electric car if they can’t afford the repair prices, batteries, headlights, etc.
Just my 2c - looking forward to any conversation we can strike up
Why do you think the conclusions aren’t fair? Does the sample seem biased? I’m very confused as to what you’re getting at.
Statistically speaking, that’s a perfectly fine sample size (large even). It sounds like it’s fairly representative. You can play around here if you’d like: https://www.qualtrics.com/blog/calculating-sample-size/
Private dealerships tend to be more heavily focused on used car sales in my understanding.
Statistics or not, the fact remains that there were thousands of dealerships not accounted for. Human choices and interactions that weren’t experienced. So to generalize to every dealership or even most dealerships is dismissive of human choice and paints an inaccurate picture.
The correlations they draw from this data are far out of the bounds of what the stats actually say and what they do not say. Their data acquisition is sparsely outlined, this isn’t a research paper that was properly conducted. It’s a rando poll that all these news orgs like to pop up to mislead the public by bending the data to fit their narrative. Par for the course of the Washington post.
So we cannot learn anything from representative sampling? I'm still not following. You just invalidated like 99% of published studies with that argument
In the link you provided, the methods seem clear enough to me?
One glaringly obvious “oddity” was the fact that they did representation based on state by state average, but then lumped each state into a group and then tried to say that was representative of the nation? How does that follow? Should it not be based off the nations as a whole if we’re making those generalizations? Margin of error being 3% of thousands is a lot of dealerships.
All I’m saying is that people need to excercise caution when it comes to statistics. These might be statistically sound measurements but the story they actually tell is much more specific. The data only tells you what you measured, meaning is derived.
For example, remember the chip shortage? Wonder why they all had such a hard time getting those cars in. Wonder how many of those dealerships if they could get EVs would sell them regardless of the opinion of one franchise owner - because business swings at its own pace. If that owner pushed against them they’d just fire him and hire someone else who won’t have a problem with it.
Maybe they don’t sell EVs because the populace legitimately doesn’t want one.
They also mention “translating answers to yes or no” what does that entail? Why was a critical data transformation not explained in detail??
They make no effort to explain any potential conflicts or any errors with their paper whatsoever- this is a boutique poll presented inappropriately and will be misconstrued by the media as always and echoers.
Don’t lump this poll with real data science.
It would be a lot easier for you to just learn the basics of statistics dude
K
Sigh. Your first post started off so intelligently too, then you had to respond.
Will you elaborate so we can discuss where I went wrong or did you just post this as an insult to feel better about yourself (idrk why else you’d come with a fork to people quietly eating their soup)
Statistics or not...
Right here
Poor wording at best - what exactly in my analysis is wrong regarding the sampling size. They based off state by state, then grouped into regions and then tried to generalize to the whole country, despite not talking to any private dealerships which are a significant populace.
Im being genuine too, nobody has specifically said what was wrong and what the “right interpretation” was.
Not one. You’ve gotta understand where I’m coming from on this aspect id hope. This isn’t sarcasm or anything else - please work with me to correct my understanding.
Why would you account for used car lots in a study about buying a brand new EV from a company dealership?
Because the headline is saying that dealerships won’t sell them period. Which would include used ev vehicles, which is my entire point. The data they collected made little to no effort to distinguish exactly what they were measuring for - new sales by franchised dealerships that were sample sized based off state to state (region to region) as an explanation for a national average/consensus. It doesn’t make sense to me but maybe there’s an aspect about sample sizing I’m not fully grasping.
Believe it or not I too went through high school science which specifically and religiously looked at statistics p error and all that fun stuff. Perhaps an aspect has faded from memory and I’m way off but I have yet to have 1 personal actually explain where I’m missing understanding or just flat out wrong just quips and insults so I’m not so convinced. Where am I misunderstanding?
What larger than average maintenance costs are you referring to?
0$ on my Tesla in 5 years. Literally. No brake change, no transmission, no out of pocket maintenance, not even a windshield fix (though that’s more luck). Changed the tires once.
The battery is still above 90%. We don’t know how long that’s gonna last but we’ll probably just change the battery and not even the brakes.
This has always been my understanding of electric cars. I live in a third would country, and they just started selling them here. My wife and I do not have any needs for a car at the moment, but when we do, I want to get an electric car due to minimal maintenance.
Yeah the reason I asked them is because on my VW Id.4, in 3 years I’ve had none either. It’s telling that they haven’t answered.
At least from what I remember off the top of my head Rivians are extraordinarily expensive to repair
Repairs are not the same as maintenance though, and Rivians are extraordinarily expensive just in general.
Are you telling me a brand that has like 10,000 cars on the road in the entire USA isn’t easy to fix??
You can't compare an expensive luxury model to a compact car regardless of it being electric or gasoline.
Is it more expensive compared to the Audi Q7, a Range Rover or a Lamborghini Urus?
I'd say that last maintenance thing for many highish brands like Mercedes, BMW, etc. Lots of people make that complaint. But electric cars really aren't known for maintenance costs. If you corner really hard, since the car is heavier you might go through tires a little quicker but that's all. The battery that people like to complain about the potential cost lasts like 100,000-300,000 miles, so it's like comparing to a full engine swap in a gasoline car.
I was under the impression I had to pay more for a “winterized” version of the car so cold temperatures didn’t kill the battery, do you know if maybe this maintainence/replacement thing is more so a problem for cold places in terms of pricing? I’ve just heard numerous stories about teslas and the repair costs so that’s where that opinion had come from. The only thing I ever heard about other models was the battery and any electrical work if you need it done for some reason.
Some BEVs dont have heat pumps. If you live in a cold area, don't buy a BEV without a heat pump. Heat pumps are able to scavenge heat energy from a variety of sources and move it around the vehicle to help the battery charge.
Might be the winter tires. Since the car is heavier I think tires might need to be a little beefier, and thus cost a little more.
Tesla did a pretty good job with their heat pump. Even with it though your range really suffers. I can't remember exactly but it might take your range from 325 miles to something like 250/260. Without the heat pump I remember hearing something closer to half range, but that might be battery manufacturer specific, not sure. So like the other commenter said, make sure you get an EV with a heat pump if you live in a cold area.
