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Electric cars are becoming a common sight these days.
according to Kelly Blue Book and Cox AutomotiveLast year, more than 1.2 million car buyers chose plug-in cars over the petrol pump, meaning they will capture a 7.6% market share in 2023.
With so many models on the market, from startups like Tesla (Tesla) And Rivian (Raven) For well-known manufacturers like General Motors (General Motors) Ford (F) Hyundai, and Honda (King Abdullah Medical Center) Buyers can experience a variety of electric vehicles from brands that have dealerships nearby.
Although electric cars may be present in the showrooms of your local dealership, the trusted salespeople inside those showrooms may share a different opinion about electric cars that may shock you.
Shocking revelation
According to a new survey of 250 “dealership leaders” across the United States, a shockingly large number say their sales staff aren’t exactly excited about selling electric cars.
As is CDK Global (Same CDK Global that was Implicated in massive data breach), salespeople’s overall mood toward electric vehicles is more negative than positive. Their data shows that 49% of dealers surveyed nationwide said their sales teams were “not at all excited about selling electric vehicles.”
Related: Electric Car Charging Company Surprises ‘Cargo Pigs’ With Sudden Wake-Up
Geographical dilemma
However, certain parts of the country are more enthusiastic about selling electric cars than others.
In a region CDK calls the “Pacific Region,” which includes the electric-vehicle-friendly states of Washington, Oregon and California, 46% of dealers had sales staff who were “moderately” or “very” enthusiastic about selling electric vehicles.
Additionally, CDK found that traders in New England had the highest number of those surveyed as the most enthusiastic, with more than 25% of traders in the region indicating they were “very enthusiastic” and 17% who were “moderately” enthusiastic.
By contrast, just 12% of dealers in what CDK defined as the East South Central region, which includes states like Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee and Kentucky, said their sales staff was in any way excited about electric vehicles.
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The real scene
According to CDK, dealers in most parts of the country have the most reservations about selling electric cars for good reason.
In many parts of the country, many dealers are the only sales and service departments for miles, and charging infrastructure is not as developed as it is in the electric vehicle production centers on the coasts.
“We live in a rural area with large distances between cities… It’s just not a viable alternative to internal combustion engines,” one Montana dealer told CDK.
Additionally, one dealer in North Dakota said the state’s cold winters would make electric cars unfriendly to the environment. Dealers envision a hypothetical difficult situation for a poor electric car owner.
“It’s primarily a range issue, which is always at risk when the heater is running at full power,” they told CDK. “If someone has to stop on the highway because of bad weather, they’ll freeze to death at a rest stop.”
Training gap
In fact, a large part of the lack of excitement about selling electric vehicles is due to the lack of training that salespeople receive on the products. In fact, a large portion of dealers nationwide are not trained on electric vehicles.
According to CDK, only 44% of dealers surveyed have “well” or “highly” trained salespeople on EVs in their showrooms. That means more than half (56%) of salespeople at dealerships across this country may not know anything about the EVs that manufacturers are asking them to sell.
Related: Tim Walz, Kamala Harris’s VP pick, chooses sides on electric cars
As with the excitement factor, the training gap also shows that a large number of trained dealer sales staff are concentrated in “electric vehicle centers.”
In New England, 83% of dealers surveyed had sales staff who were “very” or “extremely” trained to sell electric vehicles. By contrast, in the East and South Central regions, just 24% of dealers had staff with that level of training.
At the moment, the Biden administration Revised EPA Rules The U.S. auto industry is required to sell at least 56% electric vehicles out of all new car sales by 2032, and according to CDK, that won’t happen if salespeople aren’t trained.
“As the market continues to grow, with a second wave of EV-interested shoppers expected to emerge by the second half of the decade, it would be smart for dealers to ramp up EV training and get salespeople back to the basics of assessing customer needs,” CDK said.
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