Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
‘The big challenge’
Drivers want EVs, but dealers don’t know how to sell them
“The big challenge to selling EVs is training” car dealers, Pieter Nota confided over dinner one night during the Munich Auto Show.
Nota, the board member of management at BMW AG, was talking about the company’s network of 348 distributors across the United States. He was speaking with a small group of journalists who had joined him for a Bavarian repast in Munich to celebrate BMW’s launch of its first-ever electric SUV and electric sedan.
“We are hitting the market exactly when the time is right,” Nota said. “When demand is rising and when charging is making strong progress.”
Seated next to Nota was Tom Moloughney, an expert in the field of electric vehicle (EV) adoption and the senior editor of the enthusiast website InsideEVs. Moloughney owned a MINI-E back in 2010, way before EVs were cool. In the following years, he hosted annual barbecues exclusive to his (few) EV-owning neighbors and friends in New Jersey. Soon, he earned a reputation as the guy who would let you charge your battery in his driveway if it needed juice.
Moloughney has acquired more than 50 different EV chargers, all currently installed at his home. He spends much of his time visiting such manufacturers as Audi, BMW, Ford and Porsche, talking with executives about his real-world experience with the good, the bad and the ugly EVs. Most urgently, he focuses on what he calls the single critical component to the success or failure of any company trying to sell EVs: the folks who are selling them.
“One of the impediments to mass electrification is the fact that dealers are not as informed as they should be,” says Moloughney, who is also one of the architects of PlugStar, a program that helps consumers and dealers better understand and use electric vehicles.
The numbers bear out the issue: Pew Research reports that roughly 40% of Americans say they are somewhat likely to seriously consider buying an electric car. Consumer Reports puts that number as high as 71%. Still, actual sales of electric cars account for less than 2% of the market today.
“Selling an electric car (can take) three to four times as long as selling an internal combustion vehicle,” Moloughney says. “Salespeople don’t hate electric cars, it’s just that they’re there to make money. So if an EV takes them four times as long to sell, which car do you think they’ll try to sell?”
The challenges of selling electric
Moloughney leads roughly 25 dealer classes a year, both online and in small groups at dealerships for “pretty much every established OEM ... except maybe Buick.” The logic is simple: Educate car dealers upfront about the nuances of owning an electric vehicle so they can speed up their sales process, thereby motivating them to sell more EVs.
There are certainly plenty of electric vehicles to buy. In 2021 alone, Audi launched the e-Tron GT; BMW debuted the electric iX and i4; Mercedes-Benz launched the EQS sedan; and Cadillac launched the Lyric. Rivian, Tesla, Lucid, Ford, Polestar and RollsRoyce have all announced additional electric vehicles being delivered now or upcoming soon. Sales of Porsche’s electric Taycan sedan even surpassed those of the brand-favorite 911. Porsche has delivered 28,640 examples of the Taycan so far this year, compared with 27,972 versions of the 911.
The recent increase in electric options (most wellmade and capable) has effectively steepened the learning curve dealers face when tasked with selling them. Salespeople now must familiarize themselves with how to maintain, repair, charge, store, move and drive each of them — even models from various automakers if they work at a multibrand dealership.
Salespeople must now also address a different buyer. While in years past consumers considering electric vehicles such as the BMW i3 or Tesla Model S tended to be tech-forward, eco-aware first-adopters already well-versed in the nuances of going green, automakers aiming to expand in the market and sell new wares now must appeal to “normal” consumers.
“I haven’t seen any OEM that I know of that doesn’t feel like this will be a complete conversion over time (from ICE vehicles to EVs),” says Mark LaNeve, the chief business officer of Charge Enterprises. “But the consumer will come along a little bit slower … and the dealers are going to play a very critical role.”
How to sell an EV
When it comes to plugging in, “people’s initial instinct is to say, ‘That’s not for me. Maybe those people will do it, but not me,’ ” says Moloughney. “We have to get over that hurdle.”
He spends more than an hour of class time on a charging “deep drive,” outlining the differences between Level 1 and Level 2 chargers and DC Fast Chargers and explaining how to install them in an office or home garage.
“It’s about being able to quell the fears of people talking about fires [possibly from complications with the battery pack] and range anxiety, but also to explain charging and the fact that you can take an EV just about anywhere these days,” he says. “There is still a lot of misinformation about EVs, and if the dealer can’t completely eradicate those concerns, the person is not going to purchase an electric vehicle.”
He discusses best practices for salespeople (be sure to always send new customers home with a full charge), leads role-play scenarios and gives salespeople hang tags for an EV’s rearview mirror that outline every money-saving incentive that car qualifies for — and the final price after those savings have been applied.
“It’s like cheating, but having it written down like that, where they can see it, really helps them see the bottom line,” he says. The results speak for themselves: Savino says he can’t keep a Mach E in his showroom longer than a few days.