No more dealer markups: Ford wants to move to online-only sales for EVs

Enlarge / Ford's electric F-150 Lighting (L), eTransit (M), and Mustang Mach-E (R) battery-electric vehicles have all been such successes that they're all sold out for the rest of the year. And that's prompting the company to rethink how it goes about the whole process. (credit: Ford)

Few Americans enjoyed the car-buying process even before supply chain chaos, and the chip shortage led dealerships to mark up inventory by thousands of dollars. But buying a Ford electric vehicle might be a lot less painful in the future, if Ford CEO Jim Farley gets his way. On Wednesday, Farley said that he wants the company's EVs to be sold online-only, with no dealer markups or other price negotiations, according to the Detroit Free Press.

"We've got to go to non-negotiated price. We've got to go to 100 percent online. There's no inventory (at dealerships), it goes directly to the customer. And 100 percent remote pickup and delivery," Farley said while speaking at a conference in New York.

One of Tesla's most popular innovations was to eschew traditional dealerships and sell its products directly to customers. But traditional manufacturers like Ford are usually prohibited from selling their products directly to customers, a legacy of fears over vertical integration written into state laws during the early 20th century. As such, Ford's franchised dealers will almost certainly still have a role to play.

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