Ford going 100% online for EV sales

[Ogre]

So you have bought exactly the perfect car you wanted for a price you wanted to pay??

Nice..I hope its not the MY you have that doesn't fit your bikes...

Being able to buy a Tesla with 5 options doesn't make it perfect nor unwanted by some, let alone wasted.

I don’t think I used the words perfect or exact in my post.

What I can and have done is pick the color, trim, and options I want from the available options and get exactly that without paying for more.

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[JBee]

I don’t think I used the words perfect or exact in my post.

What I can and have done is pick the color, trim, and options I want from the available options and get exactly that without paying for more.

And added a non-Tesla bike rack so it suited your use case better.

My statement is simply that even though your MY didn't come with a bike rack, it wasn't a waste...at all. It at a minimum gets you from A to Z.

And ordering a car from the internet or a dealer option list is in no way a different from the "old world economy". Reminds me of "online shopping" via mail order catalogs. And no I never did the bridal ones!

 

[Ogre]

And added a non-Tesla bike rack so it suited your use case better.

My statement is simply that even though your MY didn't come with a bike rack, it wasn't a waste...at all. It at a minimum gets you from A to Z.

And ordering a car from the internet or a dealer option list is in no way a different from the "old world economy". Reminds me of "online shopping" via mail order catalogs. And no I never did the bridal ones!

The difference is I got the red Model Y LR with the hitch receiver. Exactly what I wanted.

Under the old world model I’d have needed to buy a black car to get the hitch mount. Or pay $4000 for a “convenience package“. Or bought a red car and had to get and aftermarket Hitch receiver… etc etc.

I don’t think most people consider bike racks part of the vehicle purchase. Sometimes you can buy them as options, but I would never do that because almost universally aftermarket bike racks are better suited for my needs.

 

[JBee]

The difference is I got the red Model Y LR with the hitch receiver. Exactly what I wanted.

Under the old world model I’d have needed to buy a black car to get the hitch mount. Or pay $4000 for a “convenience package“. Or bought a red car and had to get and aftermarket Hitch receiver… etc etc.

I don’t think most people consider bike racks part of the vehicle purchase. Sometimes you can buy them as options, but I would never do that because almost universally aftermarket bike racks are better suited for my needs.

But would you have purchased the SpaceX hover package?

I can think of heaps of things Tesla doesn't have that I would like it to have, and I can think of a heap of things I'm paying for, that I don't want to pay for, when I buy my CT.

Neither makes it a "waste".

Most options are niceties that don't stop a cars primary utility of moving from a to b. If the colour is such a hurdle then a wrap works too. Besides the LR and Performance are "package" options too that come with compromises, so hardly any different, and highly subjective either way and dependant on the client.

 

[Ogre]

But would you have purchased the SpaceX hover package?

I can think of heaps of things Tesla doesn't have that I would like it to have, and I can think of a heap of things I'm paying for, that I don't want to pay for, when I buy my CT.

Neither makes it a "waste".

Most options are niceties that don't stop a cars primary utility of moving from a to b. If the colour is such a hurdle then a wrap works too. Besides the LR and Performance are "package" options too that come with compromises, so hardly any different, and highly subjective either way and dependant on the client.

You are arguing past my point and seeming to ignore the point I’ve made.

Nobody is ever going to offer a perfect product. It is not possible. All you can get is he closest subset of features to what you want. With the old model, you couldn’t even get that, you got whatever happens to be in inventory because they deliberately made it difficult to get exactly what you wanted.

 

[Ogre]

They discounted cars that were older inventory simply because of the dealership structure. A dealer does not own the cars on their lot.. they essentially rent them at a monthly rate per unit delivered to the dealer from the manufacturer until they are sold. Usually they pay very little for each new model, sometimes nothing for the first few months after delivery, but this rate goes up as the cars sit on the lot and new year models come out. So they pay less per month for a lot full of the newest vehicles vs 10 old models that haven't sold in a year sitting in the corner of their lot. This is why they are incentivized to get rid of older models for low to no profit.

They are essentially taking a loan out every delivery quarter for whatever the total amount of the delivery is.. with zero interest/payments for x months and after that time runs out their loan payments are due.

I think this also explains in a nutshell why dealers vastly prefer you *never* order a specific car. If you walk onto a lot and want to order a specific build, you aren’t helping them get cars off of their lot.

The big/ clever exception to this is BMW and a few other makers who have a “pick up in Europe” deal because it allows the automaker to bypass import restrictions on their cars. It is the rare situation where the OEM has a huge incentive to let you customize the car and even gives discounts for it.

 

[Sirfun]

Okay, let me throw my hat into this discussion.

On Thanksgiving Week 2020 I was seeing lots of promotion about deals on 2020 vehicle prices. The dealers had excess vehicles that were sitting on car lots because of the Pandemic. My wife's 2012 Toyota Sienna was ready for a replacement. We had good luck with the 2 dodge/Chrysler vans we'd had over the years, and I was ready to go EV. Even though gas prices were way down I've been wanting to go EV for years, and had reserved my CT Nov. 2019. Anyway we did tons of online research and wanted a 2020 Pacifica PHEV. With the Pandemic killing gas prices, ALL the dozen or so dealers in S. California had multiple vehicles, and they all talked like they were ready to deal. I did all my contact online and over the phone. Explaining to sales folks I was wanting to buy contactless due to a handicap daughter. It took a couple of days but finally found a phenomenal deal with a dealer in Lancaster, about 100 miles away. I was able to find a PHEV Pacifica with all the options, and color we wanted. 1 1/2 years later, we couldn't be happier with our vehicle.

Timing is HUGE in every part of your life. Right now the car dealers have an advantage, but there's always change. Right now with gas prices where they are, there's massive interest in Ev's and Hybrids. It can always change.

Here's a chart showing gas prices that shows why all the dealers were having a hard time selling a hybrid in Nov. 2020.

 

[CyberGus]

“Efficiency” is not the penultimate measure of a society.

 

[Crissa]

“Efficiency” is not the penultimate measure of a society.

It's not, but would you rather have more of your town devoted to storage of cars or less?

-Crissa

 

[JBee]

It would be nice to be understood first. You also might want to keep track on which thread you are posting as well, and what comments a relevant here?

Where did I change or dispute it? Maybe with that we can actually converse.

---

The topic, from my understanding of it so far on this thread, and why I made comment on it, was around the concept of "Waste". I did not mention "economy" or "inflation" in my posts in this thread.

But lets delve a little into the philosophy you posted: If you take opportunity cost as a key principle to define waste, then everything becomes wasteful, because no one thing can produce every beneficial opportunity. A fairly negative ideology that ignores natural abundance by which we survive and strive.

Conversely, I argued that the natural world does not know "waste".

Absolutely everything is a resource in nature simply because in itself it is sustainable, and nature knows how to reuse everything. We on the other hand don't know the principles fully, or act responsibly on the principles of sustainability, to that at some point when we fail, we will just become the resource for the next attempt at sustainability, until we learn to endure within the confines of our natural world, by aligning our perceived realities to it. Even energy can never be truly wasted, only transformed.

Simply: Every single problem exists only in the minds of "man" (mankind).
This is only a battle of ideas, not of natural reality. Hence the "reality check".

So understanding that this is a false dichotomy makes the argument, the "proof" provided, and the positions presented, that:

It requires there to be cars just sitting around, waiting for them to come, or not. It's just super-wasteful.

Just flat out wrong on so many levels, and why I commented on it.

(BTW I zoned out in the story format and skipped ahead, because I couldn't listen to the me, me take, take, "accountant" relationship philosophy presented. I am only interested in relationships where I can GIVE more than I take....that might make me the most "wasteful" person on the planet because I don't always see a ROI, but hopefully the more moral one ? )

 

[Crissa]

Just flat out wrong on so many levels, and why I commented on it.

So wrong you failed to find anything wrong with it?

Ugh.

-Crissa

 

[JBee]

So wrong you failed to find anything wrong with it?

Ugh.

-Crissa

Not sure what you mean?

 

[JBee]

You are arguing past my point and seeming to ignore the point I’ve made.

Nobody is ever going to offer a perfect product. It is not possible. All you can get is he closest subset of features to what you want. With the old model, you couldn’t even get that, you got whatever happens to be in inventory because they deliberately made it difficult to get exactly what you wanted.

Um so we're in agreement there is no perfect product and every purchase is a compromise?

If so then buying "off the lot" can at most be a bigger or a different compromise?

Either way not wasteful. (Which was your original statement also in your first post quoting mine)

But why would a company deliberately make a product they can't sell, off the lot or otherwise? I thought they were greedy corporate opportunists?

Somewhere lurks a logical fallacy...

I suppose that's what happens if the original statement is not true to start with.

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