Lucid is possibly the worst managed automative company.
Beautiful cars, targeting the wrong part of the market (luxury sedan), and just not well run.
Went to a sales center this summer and was basically told GFYS.
6-12 months wait, we don't know.
No test drives, but if you put in a deposit, maybe you can test drive in the fall before config.
Yes, we have a floor model but no you cannot sit in it, let alone even touch it.
Again, would you like to place a deposit sir?
Less than 6 months later, by early December, despite reducing targets, and missing those reduced production targets.. they have immediately available inventory?
By EOY 2022 something like 30% of the cars they had ever produced were not yet delivered? LOL.
Right now theres a dozen sitting on their website to "buy now", all in different color combos.
I'm sure 100s in inventory to replace those listings as they sell. Reports from show rooms all over the country of people seeing the same cars sitting on the lots.
Note Tesla's available inventory generally tells you where the car is, and has a long unique URL that implies strongly that the listing is for a single physical vehicle. The Lucid listings are ambiguous enough to mask there being 10s or 100s of units in that config available. Some of the listings are 2022 model year still!
GFYS has trickled down to many non-EV dealers as well, in my experience. I visited a Subaru dealer in a high-population area last year and was told that they had one specific model coming in one specific undesirable color coming in about 4 months and asking if I wanted to reserve because it wouldn't last long.
Friends had a similar experience with Toyota - it was impossible to get the exact model and config they wanted (plugin Hybrid) so they settled for a similar model , put a deposit down, and still had to wait 6+ months for delivery.
Remember the key thing here.
Lucid/Rivian/Tesla are direct sales model.
With a traditional dealer you are dealing essentially with middlemen who inventory vehicles or get order allocations from the manufacturer. Traditional dealers mostly make money on financing/parts/services/etc. If the dealer has no inventory/allocations then they don't really care about you. So they don't want you wasting their time if you are going to go order the car somewhere else. And realistically, you shouldn't care about them.. you have 1000 other places to go buy a Ford.
In the direct sales model, every person in that store works for the manufacturer as well. They are poisoning customers on the brand in its totality rather than just Joe Shmo Ford dealer in town. The stores are all portals to the same national inventory / order queue.
To go from "GFYS" in July to "Please buy our cars" in November/December is inept.
It is always fascinating how different car sales are in the US when compared to Europe. In Europe, for new cars at least, dealer sell production slots. You configure your car, the dealer gets a delivery date from the OEM, you get yoyr car at that date or pick it up at the factory.
Pre configured cars are either exposition cars, cars registered for a day to move OEM inventory, or dealer inventory, not sold like above. Or they are 6-12 months old and coming from various short term leasing and rental services. This approach makes planning for OEMs a lot easier as well. Oh, and you always pay whatever the ticlet price is,inus negotiated disclunts. Nothing like list price plus, just because the dealer feels like it.
Some US franchised dealers will order a car for you, but you'll usually pay full MSRP with little room to negotiate. Porsche, for example, does a large fraction of their sales that way.
But custom ordering for many cheaper mainstream brands has become kind of pointless. The manufacturers no longer allow picking and choosing individual options and instead roll everything into a couple of large option packages. So, if you want the good sound system then you have to pay for the sunroof as well even if you don't want it.
Many US consumers expect to buy a vehicle off the lot and drive it away that day. Part of that is cultural. But many customers come in to buy because their old car was just wrecked or broken down, so they can't afford to wait months for a replacement.
> Some US franchised dealers will order a car for you, but you'll usually pay full MSRP with little room to negotiate.
That has not been my experience at all. I frequently order my new cars when I'm buying a domestic brand. I pay invoice or less. (I did not buy a car during the pandemic mess). The dealer has a guaranteed sale with minimal overhead. I haven't yet had one tell me to go away.
> how different car sales are in the US when compared to Europe
It is not consistent in the US. You can order a car from any of the domestic manufacturers (or European ones, AFAIK). You take what you can get from the Asian manufacturers, when it shows up.
I wouldn't say that's GFYS, depending on how the dealership staff handled it. Supply issues are everywhere, but I agree that not letting people even sit in a car is crappy customer service.
Crappy customer service at the sales point - where they don't even have any money from you yet is a really bad sign. It's only going to go downhill from there generally.
Especially knowing their nearest service center was 100s of miles away, but "coming soon" near me.
Had a great experience with Ford ordering a Mustang Mach-E (including transparent pricing at MSRP as well as canceling a reservation for another one - they refunded the deposit with no questions asked). Ford is really working hard to get their dealerships and their whole org to perform - Jim Farley and his top lieutenants (at least on the EV side) seem to be the best leaders in the industry. I was impressed.
Compare this to Hyundai/Kia, where every dealership was staffed by the stereotypical sleazy salesmen trying to charge me $10K over MSRP. They make great cars but lost control over their dealerships.
Interesting. I had the opposite experience after placing an early pre-order for the F-150 Lightning. The expected delivery date kept slipping back, the price kept increasing, and the salesman I was forced to interact with had no idea what was going on. They did refund quickly after I cancelled, though.
If Ford is really working hard to get their dealerships to perform then why are they still charging $15K additional mark ups on the Mustang Mach-E? I looked at buying one but there's no way I'm going to be a sucker and pay a sleazy dealer over MSRP.
> no way I'm going to be a sucker and pay a sleazy dealer over MSRP
Everybody talks like buying direct from the manufacturer will solve this. I feel like people aren't paying much attention to Tesla. Sure, there isn't a mark-up per se, but they just ratchet the price up as necessary to extract maximum profit. Same as the dealer. The big difference being that the dealer actually has competition for your business but Tesla is the only place you can go to buy a new Tesla.
Read up on their new ev sale requirements or the dealers lose our access to EVs. They are trying but limited by state laws. And I'm no fan, I don't want to ever buy a car from a dealer again. The state laws block Tesla and rivian sales in some states.
Went to a Kia dealer in San Jose to look at the 2023 EV6 in early February. It was getting great reviews in magazines like Car and Driver. Sales guy said they had only two of that configuration on the lot. Wouldn't let us sit in them or take them out for a test drive. Absolutely nuts.
Walked away and went down the street. Every other dealer was more than happy to go on test drives, even when they had low inventory.
This is one reason I ended up buying a second Tesla rather than an Ioniq 5. Hyundia/Kia dealers are accustomed to dealing with a particular kind of customer who seems more willing to take the abuse. It makes expensive Kia/Hyundai cars a tougher sell, because you are buying into a dealership experience that frequently sucks. Not just sales, but service down the road.
This feels like a common KIA dealership thing, which is a shame, because they are finally making somewhat interesting cars now.
Around the time Kia Stinger GT came out and the hypetrain was pumping at the max (2017-2018), I heard plenty of stories of people being refused Stinger test drives at the dealerships. Most of them had a common theme of the potential buter not "looking right". I.e., too young or not looking like what the dealership employees imagine someone who could afford Kia Stinger would look. Often it was outright refusal, other times it was some bs made up reason, even though it was obvious the cars were used for test drives and were available. Conveniently enough for the dealership, just not for those specific customers.
This is extremely ironic, because the more "premium" the car brand is, the better they treat you at the dealership, even if you clearly cannot afford it at the moment. Here is a personal anecdote.
I went to a BMW dealership once (the most "premium" brand dealership I've ever went to by that point in time), because I was thinking of upgrading my decade+ old Camry. I didn't have money at the time to buy, but that was fine, because I had honestly no idea what car I wanted in any terms other than i wanted it to be "good" and "no larger than a Camry, preferably closer to being Honda Civic-sized". So I scheduled a bunch of test drives at different dealerships to try out a bunch of different cars and see it for myself. Plus, even if I had the money to buy at that time, I knew that a major redesign was coming for BMWs I was looking for in the next few years, and I was going to wait until then regardless. I didn't want to waste anyone's time, so I honestly told all of that to the salesman working with me at the dealership. The experience I got was great, even with all of that info in mind. No aggresive sales tactics, no "we might have a financing option that could work for you" insistence after being told "no" once, suggesting other fun cars to try ("since you aren't planning to buy now anyway, wanna try this cool i8? I know a street about a mile away that is a long stretch with no cameras or cops, and it is usually empty, so we can test out the car there for real."), and in general just providing great service all around (any inventory questions and delivery times were discussed in the most plain and no bs terms). I don't even like BMW cars, but this experience made me strongly consider one in the future and understand why some people swear by brands like Mercedes/Audi/BMW/Porsche/etc., despite some of their cars being pretty questionable and (arguably) not the best bang for the buck.
Disclaimer: I've never owned and still don't own a car from any of the brands mentioned, and neither do I have any relationship with those companies outside of test driving a few of their cars.
100% this.
I bought a BMW EV partially because the dealer experience was so good.
He was like, here's the demo car.. we have an inventory car on the way in 3 months or you can customer order with 6-9mo wait. Zero pressure.
The guy was like hey here's the car.. let me run a copy of your ID, here's the keys to the car, take it for a spin and come back in 30min let me know what you think. This was at the same time other EV makers couldn't be bothered to keep a demo car on lot, or if they did wouldn't let you drive/touch/etc. Even let me come back with my wife and take if for an hour out on the highway, etc to test in more conditions.
Car manufacturers discovered that they can get higher profit margins per vehicle with supply constrained, and now they are addicted to it. GM is actually cutting production to avoid having to give up the "low supply" margins. This is the kind of thing that works until some competitor decides to ramp production and drop prices and eat your lunch. On a side note Tesla is just opened up their Texas gigafactory and recently dropped prices across the board.
This is a prisoner's dilemma situation, and it doesn't look like it's in anyone's interest to defect. By keeping supply constrained, everybody's profit margins are rising.
Hyundai is poised to suppress Stellantis in the US in new car sales because they're one of the few manufacturers actually selling a product the average American can afford. This is despite some serious quality issue headwinds.
It's one thing to not have cars on the lot, its another to have one there and try to take deposits from people while not let them touch/sit in the car 2 feet away!
Don't you have to get a crazy amount of miles on that car to make it worth paying close to six figures? How do most people not just walk away from that kind of deal?
If you are buying at MSRP, the RAV4 Prime almost never makes sense without the federal tax credit (that it no longer qualifies for). If you buy one, you are doing it for the increased performance or your own desire to have a PHEV. If you are simply in it for the most economical RAV4, get the regular hybrid trim.
I visited a Subaru dealer in a high-population area last year and was told that they had one specific model coming in one specific undesirable color coming in about 4 months and asking if I wanted to reserve because it wouldn't last long.
How is this GFYS?
The car you wanted was not on the lot, so you had to factory-order it. That meant a wait. And due to the pandemic-related parts issues, that meant a much longer wait than normal.
Would you have preferred they lie to you, tell you that the car you wanted was just about to arrive, and then string you along for months until it actually did arrive?
(I also ordered a Subaru last year in a high-population area. I had to reserve it in advance, and waited 4 months for it. It's a good thing I did, since that model and trim has been selling immediately as soon as it arrives on the lot: within 250 miles of me, the only available vehicles have been reservations on dealer-orders that were placed by buyers who also placed factory orders.)
Nitpick. You don't factory order a Subaru (or Toyota, or any other Japanese automaker for that matter). You can put your desired specs on a waitlist, however, for when one that matches comes out of the pipe. This is distinct from a domestic manufacturer like GM, where you absolutely can place an order for a car exactly matching your desires, and it will get allocated and produced with your name already on it, configured exactly as you want.
If you want to nitpick about it, some Subarus are made in the U.S., in Indiana, and you can factory orders those models. https://www.subaru-sia.com/about
This is distinct from placing a reservation on an already-specced vehicle in the pipeline, which you can still modify with packages (but for which the engine, paint, and internal trim colors are locked). I placed a reservation on a dealer-ordered vehicle which just happened to already be specced the way I would have factory-ordered it.
Random contrary data point: I was around when two Subarus were purchased from the Bozeman dealer last year. Yes they had no cars on the lot (plenty of overpriced used vehicles) but if you were willing to wait a couple of months and take the vehicles in their incoming pipeline all was good.
I'd say that is dealer specific, I purchased a new Impreza in September of 2021, my specific trim and options weren't on the lot, and was easily given a factory order.
Got a '22 Impreza Sport Hatchback with no hassle, would easily recommend this dealer again.
Seems to be the case on the Impreza forum too, as most owners are buying factory orders from the dealers, with a few saying that the dealer only sells Imprezas thru custom orders.
As for other models, that may be different. My family had no issue with getting a Forester.
I bought a tiny bit of stock before the SPAC merger and I've come to the same conclusion.
Did you know the entire company is really controlled by the king of Saudia Arabia? That's a fun fact buried deep in the investor docs. Perhaps he and the company don't care if it's successful? Maybe they'd even like it to fail.
Lucid is a money pit for the Saudis so they have something to point to and show that they’re trying to move away from fossil fuels. You’d have to be completely insane to buy one of those things though. Especially when there are better and cheaper options without warranty risk.
The more I looked at it, the more it seemed obvious that Lucid/etc super small, non-scaled EV startups were to be treated as rich boy toys.
It can't be your primary car. It might need to travel 500 miles to get service and be gone for weeks. It might never get the ADAS software they claim they have in R&D. It might go bankrupt before your warranty is up. It may go to $0 before you can resale it. Etc.
The real problem for Apple ever getting into EVs is that they have not managed US production at scale in decades. This is the challenge of domestic auto sales and what most EV startups are failing at.
So buying a neat-o car that can't scale production & service network isn't going to help Apple much.
My tinfoil hat belief is that the design was solely to please their investors, an electric Mercedes S Class. Sad because it really is the best designed EV in the market IMO.
Weird. Although I drive a Tesla Model S Plaid, I recently wanted to test drive a Lucid. I reached out to Lucid through their website, received a scheduling call the next day, and had a very pleasant experience test driving a Lucid one week later.
I don’t know whether Lucid is having issues building or moving their inventory, but my experience of their customer service was 100% satisfactory.
No, Faraday is (was?) the worst managed automotive company. Faraday never even managed to build a non-working prototype.
Lucid actually has cars on the road. They're great cars, but at their price point they need more exterior visual flair to match the expectations of the luxury set.
Lucid mistimed the market. By the time their cars were ready, the low interest rates were a distant memory and their target market (highly paid tech workers) had started cutting back on spending due to massive industry layoffs.
Note that Lucid today is basically exactly where Tesla was at this point a decade ago, but Tesla had the benefit of 0% interest rates goosing spending.
Did they literally tell you to get lost? The unavailability of test drives has been a problem for all of these new EVs, including rivian, and it was true for Tesla when they first started selling. I'm suspicious of the lack of demand for rivians, because people like him so much and they're selling used for over lust price, barely, at this point. The lucids are just too expensive for what you get so I can believe they've had a reduction in people waiting, the wide variety of other competitive EVs hurt them more than rivians because there's a shortage of trucks.
Beautiful cars, targeting the wrong part of the market (luxury sedan), and just not well run.
Went to a sales center this summer and was basically told GFYS. 6-12 months wait, we don't know. No test drives, but if you put in a deposit, maybe you can test drive in the fall before config. Yes, we have a floor model but no you cannot sit in it, let alone even touch it. Again, would you like to place a deposit sir?
Less than 6 months later, by early December, despite reducing targets, and missing those reduced production targets.. they have immediately available inventory?
By EOY 2022 something like 30% of the cars they had ever produced were not yet delivered? LOL.
Right now theres a dozen sitting on their website to "buy now", all in different color combos. I'm sure 100s in inventory to replace those listings as they sell. Reports from show rooms all over the country of people seeing the same cars sitting on the lots. Note Tesla's available inventory generally tells you where the car is, and has a long unique URL that implies strongly that the listing is for a single physical vehicle. The Lucid listings are ambiguous enough to mask there being 10s or 100s of units in that config available. Some of the listings are 2022 model year still!
Insane.