If car companies are going to compete in the future they will have to either eliminate dealers or at least force some type of structure to the sales process, otherwise people will gravitate to the companies that do (like Tesla).
Just a worse consumer experience that reflects poorly on the brand? Sony seems to deal with it with sold-out ps5 and resellers gauging.
I mean you're not the only one suggesting this is a problem. Ford clearly seems to have a problem with dealerships and their markup I guess (or I misread the article).
Just getting on a centralized waiting list would have been 10x easier and more user friendly.
Who's to say Ford can't "markup" either? To me that's exactly what it is...non-negotiated. If the dealer can sell a Mach-E for $5k above MSRP, Ford is leaving money on the table. Ford can bump up their non-negotiated price just as much. Why not? What are you going to do, go to another dealership and negotiate?
I can think of a handful of questions that need to be answered besides just saying "middle man bad".
What's the cost of delivering dozens of vehicles from the plant to a dealership vs delivering one off vehicles to a house? Or the cost of an OEM having their own employees distributed to answer questions on a vehicle. GM has more than 4000 dealerships...would sales decrease because it would be less accessible to customers to see, test drive and service vehicles?
I don't believe the current dealership model of huge lots, tens of employees is efficient. But I'm not so certain an OEM handling everything themselves is optimal.