Open electric vehicle market to direct sales
By The Herald Editorial Board
If you’re in the market for an electric vehicle, your shopping experience — rather than your mileage — may vary, depending on the make of car or truck you’re most interested in.
If, say, you’re curious about the vehicles that U.S. EV-only manufacturers, such as Lucid and Rivian offer, you’re invited to their University Village “spaces” in Seattle to kick the tires, climb into a seat, inhale that “new EV smell” and hang-out in the parking lot, but that’s about it. No test drive of Rivian’s trucks or SUVs, no discussing with a sales associate of the colors and options of Lucid’s Air and Gravity sedans and SUVs.
And if you want to talk leases or purchase and financing, rather than being directed to an office, you’re offered a web address, where you can make those arrangements yourself, after which you’ll wait for delivery. You won’t be driving off the lot that afternoon, except in your old car.
That’s because state law prohibits auto makers from selling directly to customers, leaving that business to dealerships in the state. The only exception to the law, adopted in 2014, was for Tesla, which is allowed to sell directly to customers, an exemption allowed when it was basically the sole EV-only maker in the U.S.
https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/editorial-open-electric-vehicle-market-to-direct-sales/