Drive Motors (YC W16) Lets You Actually Buy a Car Online
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
Not at all. Perhaps the biggest benefit of all to the Tesla approach is not having to deal with a dealership at all. This is still going to incur all of the traditional slimy dealer markups.
Both were imported from Japan, inspected and purchased by professional buyers at Japanese auctions, with communications, importation, paperwork etc arranged by a professional broker. Selection of the vehicles was made based on photographs and inspection reports sent via email.
Ultimately a very simple and successful operation which I will almost certainly do again.
How did you find these buyers? Are these just auto brokers (e.g., these guys are popular in SV: http://www.hammerauto.com/) or is this something different?
I never had any contact with the buyers themselves - they may not actually speak english.
If I had to guess, I would say the buyers work for many different brokers.
What I'd want as an American car buyer is not only configure and buy a car online but also have all the options available from the manufacturer (i.e. proper made to order cars).
I just purchased a 2016 Tacoma truck late last year. I placed the order probably 6-8 weeks before it was available. I didn't pay until I picked it up.
I was able to get the exact options I wanted without a hassle.
It is true that the dealership may order pre-configured cars or the manufacturer will allot certain builds, but if you have time and patience, you can usually get what you want.
That said, there are times where you can't get things "ala carte", which may be what you heard (or the fact that dealers have preconfigured allocations).
The difference between dealers here and say.. in Germany (where most of my family still ives) are that the dealers in the US just have waaay more inventory on the lot, so you don't necessarily have to wait 3 months for a build.
2. I also suspect that American car dealers developed in an environment where neither space nor capital was constrained, and so it was perfectly ok to hold 100+ cars in inventory at a time at every dealership. Factories love it too, because once the car goes to the dealership, it's off the manufacturer's books -- the dealer owns it.
3. Synergistically with 1 and 2, American car salesmen are strongly incentivized to sell you something off their lot, or at worst to sell you a car that they can borrow from the dealer one town over.
Last year, I paid cash for a new car at a dealership. I arranged the entire purchase via email, but it still took about 2-hours at the dealership doing paperwork, declining all the BS extras and getting my car "prepped" to drive out the door. Then I had to arrange for the single largest wire-transfer I've ever had leave my bank account.
Assuming Drive Motors takes away a good part of that hassle, it'll be a great asset to people like me who don't particularly relish the dealership process.
It is a known fact now that you can go directly to a dealer and get a better deal than TrueCar these days so wonder if this service really adds any value!!??
Just went through the car buying experience recently and the best way by far was to blast emails to all dealers with the specific trim+options we wanted and then use their written quotes to leverage against each other. I explicitly didn't do anything over the phone for this exact reason.
One thing I found fascinating was that the local Subaru dealers was totally cool with this approach while trying to talk to Mazda dealers was like pulling teeth to get a window sheet or quote. Subaru took us ~2 days to nail down while Mazda was ~1.5 week of back and forth.
The Tesla experience still beats all of them hands-down(we'd rather own a second Telsa if it was feasible) so I hope they can mix up things in some manner.
It's nice to see that the market isn't waiting around and is building legitimate alternatives to the traditional process.
One big thing that isn't ever in the reviews: How many buttons do you have to push to get in/out of the thing? Getting me and my dog out of the new BMWs takes like 10 different steps.
And one more: I want to see multiple cars of the same basic model to look for consistent build quality. A reliable car will be from a factory where every product is identical (Honda) rather than hand-build shed cars (TVR and anything british).
I am sure when you go to a dealership, to look at the product, you come home to read the reviews and do more research before you buy and then go back to the dealership to make the purchase.
What this solves is the latter part. There's no need to go back to the dealership after you look at the car in person and read reviews online.
I can't help but think the only reason dealerships would buy into this is to make the guy who doesn't want to haggle pay more
Really want to save money on a car? Buy a 2-3 year old lease return...