ElectricMotorcycleForum.com
General Category => General Discussion => Topic started by: Richard230 on July 07, 2014, 08:39:11 PM
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In the August issue of Consumer Reports, starting on page 49, is a two-page article titled "Cars", "Plug-in reality check". It questions if electric-car (and I think the same would apply to electric motorcycles) customers are getting the right information from dealers. According to the article, there have been a number of reports from their readers about salesmen discouraging customers from buying electric or plug-in vehicles and steering them toward ICE-powered vehicles instead, as well as providing goofy (uninformed) information regarding electric vehicles. In some cases, customers will even ask to see electric cars but will be told that none are in stock or otherwise not available, even though they were available in the dealer's inventory.
To check these stories, Consumer Reports sent 20 secret shoppers to 85 dealerships in California, Maryland, New York and Oregon, between December 2013 and March 2014, to determine how well sales people were doing at promoting EV's and if they were giving customers accurate information. In general, they substantiated many of their readers' reports. Some dealers would not admit to having an electric vehicle in stock (even though they did) and some sales people would provide incorrect information, such as that the batteries in a plug-in Prius would require replacement every couple of years. Another dealer said that the Focus EV could not be leased. All sorts of other incorrect information was provided at various dealerships, with Honda and Toyota dealers being the worse.
The Consumer Reports article ends with a side-bar recommending when to buy electric or gas and then answers six general questions regarding electric cars.
While cars are not motorcycles, my guess is that the situation is a lot worse at many of the relatively few motorcycle shops that sell electric motorcycles, such as Brammos and Zeros.
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I'm happy to say that this was *not* the case at Streetbike, however thats only one point of data.
Plus I can well believe the findings of the report on a wider scale. Its an open secret that some car manufacturers are only buildings EVs because they have to, and at least one CEO of a car manufacturer (Fiat*) went public to say "please don't buy our EVs" That attitude will filter down to the dealers, and I would go far as to say that dealers might even have been told by the manufacturers to lie about their EV's in order to discourage sales.
(* http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/21/chrsyelr-ceo-evs-idUSL1N0O71MS20140521 (http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/21/chrsyelr-ceo-evs-idUSL1N0O71MS20140521))
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I suppose maybe it's just me, but it seems like walking into a vehicle dealership and letting them talk you INTO or OUT OF anything, even a key ring, is just foolish. As a rule, the only thing that interests a vehicle salesman is what proves profitable for him -- vehicles aren't purchased often enough to reap much of a reward from return business, and therefore customer satisfaction isn't high on the priority list.
You've got to do your research before you go in, and firmly inform the salesman of what you want to look at. If he DOES find something else that piques your interest, LEAVE THE STORE, do some more research, and come back better prepared. This isn't chewing gum, you can't buy it on impulse.