The END of Car Dealers Is NEAR | Episode 1042

Hi! You're listening to Meditating with Jan from Toyota.

Soften your focus and visualize yourself off-roading in a Tacoma!

Now engage your senses. What do you hear?

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Toyota, let's go places!

This is Mike Ballo of Lexicon Valley.

And I'm Bob Garfield. Are you one of those people who sometimes uses words?

Do you communicate or acquire information with, you know, language?

Hey, us too! So join us on Lexicon Valley to true over the history, culture, and many mysteries of English.

Plus some lost cracks.

Find us on one of those apps where people listen to podcasts.

I'm doing well, Pops. Happy Monday. Thank you everyone so much for tuning in.

The end of Car Dealers is near. Holy cow!

What happened in the state of Washington recently with Rivian is crazy.

We're going to break it all down here on Car Edge Live.

And honestly, not my most hyperbolic headline because what is the precedent being set now in the state of Washington is really, really, really a big deal before we hop into Today Show.

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Dad, the big story this morning that we're going to cover comes from the state of Washington.

Rivian has secured direct sales within the state, but that's kind of the tip of the iceberg here.

There's a new law that allows Rivian and Lucida to sell directly to consumers.

There are growing pressures that on traditional franchise dealer models break down for us here.

What's happening and why this could be a signal of the beginning of the end for something that we all know, and dare I say love, car dealerships.

What's going on in the state of Washington?

Well, we love car dealerships for the fact that they allow us to have a reason to be in business.

They gave you a career for 40 years, so there's a lot of...

40 plus, yeah. So what's going on in Washington?

Well, the Washington Automobile Dealer Association caved because Rivian and Lucida, they want to be able to sell direct and direct to customers.

And the Washington Automobile Dealer Association was fighting it and the state legislature was looking at it.

And well, there's a poll that suggests that 70% of the people in the state of Washington would like the ability to be able to buy direct from automobile manufacturers.

And Rivian was spending nearly $5 million towards their goal and were prepared to spend an additional $25 million and looking at what the consumers in the state wanted.

The dealers association thought, well, maybe it would be in our best interest to find some type of compromise with the state legislature, and they did.

And so Lucida and Rivian will be able to sell direct to customers.

They've got a special car route for those two companies, so they can sell direct to customers because, well, let's face it, for the most part, customers hate automobile dealerships.

I think that's the gist of the article.

Now, for those of you that are unfamiliar, in most states you cannot sell directly to consumer.

Dealers do exist for that reason, and that is because in every single state there are franchise dealer laws.

There is no federal law that mandates car dealerships or mandates that you cannot have direct to consumer sales.

Wikipedia actually has a really good table down here, right here, that breaks down for every single state what the current direct sales exemption status is.

And what's interesting about this stat is if I come all the way down here, let's find Washington, manufacturers without franchise agreements that began sales before 2014 exempts Tesla only.

Those were the dealerships that could sell directly to consumer.

This new car route sets a precedent that the Rivians and Lucids of the world could be getting more car routes in more states to sell direct to consumer, and that is an interesting precedent to sell.

It is, and the truth of the matter is that if you were to do a national poll, I wouldn't be surprised if nationally 70% of respondents

would say we'd like to be able to deal direct with the manufacturer that we don't particularly care for the dealer model as it exists today.

And, you know, in many states the dealers association is strong enough to be able to fight those overtures off, but I don't think ultimately that the dealers associations are going to win this battle.

I think ultimately it depends on customers, and customers can learn to vote with their wallet.

And if that means that they bypass typical dealerships to do business with startups like Rivian or Lucid or Tesla or others out there, you know, eventually dealers will notice, states will notice,

and those type of car routes that we're seeing for Rivian and Lucid and Tesla will see for other brands as well ultimately.

But, you know, how many years from now is that?

Yeah.

I don't know, but I think the ultimate power will rest with consumers as to how they spend their money.

Completely agree.

Now, Deb, what's interesting here is we have ongoing ballot initiatives in Arkansas, Ohio, Oklahoma, Montana, Nebraska, and South Dakota.

So those are states that could end up siding similarly to Washington state here.

Again, Arkansas, Ohio, Oklahoma, Montana, Nebraska, and South Dakota where they essentially now allow.

Not a sunshine.

It's like the crux of this is they are now allowing direct-to-consumer sales, which was a total change from how they had been operating.

For the past century, you could not sell cars direct-to-consumer.

Tesla obviously started this work way back when.

And in many states, Tesla is the only manufacturer that has the ability to sell direct-to-consumer.

Here's an example, for example, in Georgia.

EV-only manufacturers without franchise agreements that began sales before 2015 exempts Tesla only.

And you can only have up to five stores that sell direct-to-consumer in the state of Georgia.

These rules that inevitably are just going to continue to get changed.

And in many cases, they think we'll start to look more and more like what Washington just did.

But again, that's kind of the tip of the iceberg here.

This could be a start of a new precedent for many other states to take on as well.

Yes, and also, you know, it's going to be based on how much money these various startups have to throw at all these states when it comes to

promoting the idea of manufacturer-to-consumer sales.

You know, it doesn't happen in a vacuum.

It doesn't happen without Rivian committing $5 million and an additional $25 million if necessary.

You know, these are all dollars that are spent to change public opinion.

So, I don't know how much money each startup sets aside for causes like this.

You know, I just, I can't begin to imagine that somewhere on the business proposal side of things,

it says 2% of expense for the next five years or whatever it is, is going to go towards a changing public opinion.

And that could, you know, we could be looking at $2 million, we could be looking at $30 million.

But they all have to factor it in because they have to change the reality.

And the reality is that in many, many states they cannot sell direct to consumer and they need that in order for this business model to take off.

And in many states, you know, manufacturers are being sued right now.

VW is being sued by dealerships over Scout.

You know, so there are class action, or not even class action, I shouldn't say, but just lawsuits that have come out as a result of these manufacturers pushing for direct to consumer sales.

But at the same time, in the same breath, there's a lot of lobbying money being spent, i.e. the Rivians of the world, the Lucids of the world, the Teslas of the world to sell direct to consumer.

You and I have said this for a while now, the people who win the most in all this.

I would be the lawyers.

The lawyers. The lawyers are going to make a lot of money over the next couple of years here as this all gets ironed out in these various lawsuits, state regulations, state laws, etc.

But what happened recently in Washington, the fact that the Dealers Association did back down, that's a big, big sign, especially when there's other ballot initiatives exist right now in this moment.

Well, you have to read the room, you know, and the Dealers Association, they don't live in a vacuum either.

And they can see the poll results just like anybody else.

Allowing such upstarts as Lucid and Rivian, the ability to be able to sell direct in Washington.

You know, these people aren't stupid.

You know, Dealers Associations, they have a lot of money and a lot of power.

And, you know, they have in all 50 states, Dealers Associations have bought and paid for some of the finest politicians that are available to be bought and paid for to support what Dealers want.

And, you know, maybe to some degree, the tide is shifting and, you know, sometimes maybe even politicians will bend to the will of the people.

Or the dollars are flowing in a different direction.

And so now those other folks can fund it more aggressively.

Let's come here down from Scott.

Thank you, Scott.

We appreciate my two cents.

I think dealerships did this to themselves.

The manufacturers give groups enough for profit, dealers get greedy and markup.

This is an interesting take that because, again, we have been doing a ton of research at caredge.com and on the dealer ratings and reviews.

And the reason I bring that up is because when you look at the report that for the actual breakdown of grades, we pulled up on the screen really quickly here.

Most dealers are good.

Like that's what our data shows fairly conclusively is most dealers are good.

And so did dealerships do this to themselves?

Yes.

But I think it was the, I don't know, 8% that get a D grade and the 6% that get an F grade that did it for everyone.

Because, yeah, consumers hate buying cars.

They hate going to the dealership.

And so the idea that I could buy a Rivian from my house and have it directly show, yeah, of course that's attractive.

But I just think it's important to acknowledge that not all dealers are bad, but the ones that are, they've earned that reputation.

And let me say this if I may.

Yeah, please.

Good is a relative term.

Okay.

And if the, if the consumers perception for the last 50, 60, 70 years is been or has been that dealerships take advantage of them.

Then it to be good just means that some dealerships would take less advantage of the customers.

And so customers might think that is good as opposed to what they had encountered in the past.

I think even dealers that perhaps grade as good still need to do better.

And, and so, you know, the theory of, you know, do you want to be the best of the worst or the worst of the best?

And, you know, a lot of the dealers that fall into the good category are the worst of the best.

They're not, they're not good, good, but they're better than some of their, their competitors out there.

So it is a relative term.

Well said point that really well.

So I listen, I've worked for dealers.

I've worked for good ones.

I've worked for bad ones.

I've worked for thieves and I've worked for those who, who actually empowered their customers.

So it is, it is a business decision that usually gets made by the owner of the dealership as to how they're going to operate and what the transparency level is.

But there's more to it than transparency.

There is also a component that I speak to you about often, which is the fairness aspect of it.

You can be transparent and not fair or you can be fair and less transparent.

What we need to figure out is a way to get dealers to be transparent and fair.

Well, this is what's an interesting dynamic within the Rivian news.

So again, the end of car dealers is near.

Well, yeah, that's something that many of us should be thinking and talking about after again, just this past weekend, Rivian has secured direct sales as a win in the state of Washington.

And we know there's these ballot initiatives in other states as well.

But the question I then asked that, yes, thinking about Apple for a second here, yes, thinking about a walled garden.

All right.

You remember when Apple came out with the dongle, you had to have a dongle for things because nothing else could plug into your computer.

Next thing you know, you're buying dongles.

Like being in a walled garden is also not necessarily fair.

And so I think that's one of the things we'll have to watch here is just because we move towards direct sales.

Sure.

More transparent, of course, because the manufacturer is not going to add a pinstripe for $250.

No, like Tesla has proven that people want to just buy a car from a manufacturer.

That's been proven time and timing again.

But is that fair?

I don't know.

We'll have to see because when we have seen other manufacturers of not necessarily cars, but other goods, you have a walled garden.

What's their incentive to have to make more money?

What's the dealer incentive to make more money?

This is like the downside of capitalism.

So I'm just calling that out here as well.

Hi, you're listening to Meditating with Jan from Toyota.

Soften your focus and visualize yourself off-roading in a Tacoma.

Now engage your senses.

What do you hear?

A donkey.

Because you're driving the kids to a farm sanctuary in a Grand Highlander.

Breathe in, breathe out, and go from dreaming it to driving it today.

Dealer inventory may vary.

See your participating Toyota dealer for details.

Event ends March 31st.

Toyota, let's go places.

This is Mike Ballo of Lexicon Valley.

And I'm Bob Garfield.

Are you one of those people who sometimes uses words?

Do you communicate or acquire information with, you know, language?

Hey, us too.

So join us on Lexicon Valley to true over the history, culture, and many mysteries of English.

Plus some wisecracks.

Find us on one of those apps where people listen to podcasts.

No, I concur.

I mean, you know, how many years did it take before on Apple products?

You could just use a regular USB-C cord when it came to charging and everything else.

You know, it didn't have to be some proprietary cord that you could only get from them.

So yeah, no, I get it.

And yes, I would suspect that manufacturers that would sell direct to consumers can set

up the same type of scenarios that Apple had for many years.

So yeah, I think whether it is independent franchise dealers, independent used car dealers,

manufacturer sponsored dealerships such as what Tesla has, there needs to be the component

of both transparency and fairness.

And the hardest part when it comes to fairness is who gets to decide what's fair and what isn't.

You know, I remember in all the years I was doing it.

And you know, I would look at things a little bit through a different eye than most.

And I would have fun with it.

And I used to tell people, trust me, come in and no reasonable offer will be refused.

The only problem is I get to decide what's reasonable, not you.

And so what you might think is reasonable might not be something that I think is reasonable.

So I, you know, I talk about fairness all the time.

I don't know how we define fairness.

I don't know if it's definable in this type of context.

But that is what needs to happen as to the entire process where it has to be not only transparent,

but relatively fair in everyone's eyes.

So what does that mean?

In my mind, it means the dealers would be upset with part of it

and the customers would be upset with part of it because both parties are upset.

That must mean it's fair.

Just the way I look at things.

I know of your son.

So you're like in me, obviously.

Like I am your DNA.

I have your offspring.

But holy cow, do we think about things differently?

One of the things that I think will make this more fair, Dad, in the state of Washington,

for example, where now you're going to be able to buy a Rivian or a Lucid directly from the manufacturer,

doesn't matter how strong of a negotiator you are.

The price you're going to pay is the price you're going to pay because you're buying it directly from the manufacturer.

So I think in a lot of ways direct-to-consumer sales sets a precedent for it to be more fair

because it takes you out the negotiation aspect.

And that really does, I think, create a more level playing field for people who are interested in buying parts.

And that's one of the changes that I witnessed in automotive retail for years and years and years,

especially when it came to the use car side of things, where many dealers went to what they call market-based pricing.

Okay, that the market will determine what the prices of the vehicles are and they are no longer negotiable.

The price is the price.

And the whole concept behind that was that good negotiator or bad negotiator doesn't matter

because you don't get to negotiate.

Everybody pays the same.

Now, is that fair for a good negotiator?

Maybe not.

Is it good for the bad negotiator?

Absolutely, because we have proven statistically that the vast majority of Americans hate having to negotiate

over the price of a vehicle.

I mean, could you imagine if the same business model were applied to hotels or airplanes,

where, excuse me, you negotiate directly with the airline as to what your airfare is going to be on any given flight?

Who the hell has time for all that?

And that's why it would be good to have some type of, it's on silent, damn it.

Okay, it's just a reminder that we have to film in 10 minutes.

Okay, I don't know how to shut off the reminders.

But my point is, we have to figure out a way that if everybody's paying the same price, it seems to be a fair price, whatever that may be.

All right, so there you go, folks.

Car dealers definitely fill in the heat today.

Probably be filling it in a few more states that we talked about earlier that have those pending ballot measures.

Definitely an interesting time to be a car dealer.

From Scuba Bob.

I think that's Squab Bob.

Thanks, Squab Bob.

Does Pops take his Mazda to the dealership for service?

Do you, Deb?

He does.

There you go.

I don't go there often.

You know, I've been to the dealership once in the year that I've had the vehicle.

I took it in when I had 1,300 some miles on it for my first oil change, which was six months into my ownership or leasing experience with it.

On the 24th of this month, I hit my one-year anniversary.

I only have 2,150 miles.

I just don't feel like taking it in and having the oil changed after 800 miles.

So I figure I'll wait.

But yes, I do take my vehicle into the dealership where I bought it.

A couple more comments from the chat, and then we've got one more story I want to head on today from Jonathan.

I'm in the market for a new vehicle.

Should I wait for April or May, or is it the best time to buy at the end of Q1?

What would you be doing to add new cars right now?

You wait until April May, or are you making a move today?

Well, I think we're all in agreement that the sales of new cars through the first quarter are happening at a slower pace than what pundits had predicted.

They had predicted that the market was going to be flat or contracting to a small degree, but it's happening faster.

The sales are declining much more rapidly than what people think.

So perhaps with the quarter ending tomorrow, there could be some deals to be had today or tomorrow

to try and just make the first quarter look a little better than it has.

And we know, looking at automotive news every morning, that the average asking price,

and it's based on the advertised price.

And we know that the advertised price and then what the ultimate selling price are are two different things.

But based on the average advertised price, we're up to $50,400, which is $750 more than was at the beginning of this year.

So I don't know that we see asking prices going down dramatically moving forward.

I think you might be able to take advantage of the fact that the month ends and the quarter ends tomorrow and try your best.

Yeah, I'm short and sweet here. I would be calling up car dealers today.

Find vehicles that have been sitting on there a lot for a while.

If you're interested in a vehicle that still has a new 2025 out there, you're amenable to that.

I mean, there's a lot of desperation right now.

We see it in the messaging that we see back from car dealers.

A lot of people trying to make their month good and their quarter good, but I would take advantage of that right now.

Here's a perfect example of that from Good Dude.

I just bought a 2025 Mitsubishi Outlander using Car Edge Pro in the dealer, or has been in Laurel, Maryland, delivered it to me 50 miles away.

I never set foot in the dealership thanks Car Edge Pro.

That's the type of stuff right now that is happening, really, really, really happening.

So take advantage of this moment.

It is certainly a buyer's market for new cars and a seller's market for used cars.

There's not enough quality used cars out there.

It's the best time to buy a used car.

I don't know the best time, but the worst time is right now.

The worst time is literally right now.

There's spring selling season.

We'll probably talk about the used car market tomorrow.

Let me have the latest blackbook data.

But used cars are appreciating in value right now.

If anything to do with a used car, let me pull it up on the screen really quickly.

We just started back on caredge.com.

Something that we're beta testing, which is excuse me.

Let me get us in the right orientation.

Go to caredge.com.

Click on what's my car worth, and you can actually add vehicles here,

and you'll have dealers start to compete and bid to buy your vehicle.

This is something new that we're piloting, packetcaredge.com.

I encourage everyone right now to get dealers to bid on your car.

Why not?

Prices of used cars are skyrocketing at the auction.

They're desperate to buy used cars and not pay a boatload at the auctions.

Take advantage of that.

So those are my thoughts around that, Pops.

No, I concur 100%.

The beauty of a dealership being able to buy a car directly from a consumer

is there's no transportation cost to get it from the auction to the dealership

because the consumer delivers it to the dealership.

Yes, you might pay a tad more.

Yeah, but it's just cheaper, although overall cost is way cheaper than going to the auction.

Oh, absolutely.

You can pay up for the car, yeah.

Absolutely, yeah.

I mean, smart dealerships are looking at ways to be able to add inventory

without having to go to the auctions and pay the prices that they'd have to pay there.

And so even if they paid MMR or three or 4% over MMR,

which is Nanheim Market Report, the fact that there's no transportation costs

means they're still buying it ultimately for less than what they would at the auctions.

So those are important ways for dealerships to source vehicles directly from consumers.

New car market, buyer's market.

Used car market, seller's market.

That applies, all right?

So if you're in the market to buy a car, look at new ones.

If you're in the market to sell a car, good thing.

Now's the time for you to be a seller, not a buyer.

Dad, we've got another thoughtful contribution.

Excuse me from Rich.

We appreciate Rich.

This space for rent.

All right, we'll see.

We'll see Rich.

We appreciate that.

Dad, there was another story I wanted to cover today just briefly here.

Yes.

Super fascinating.

We'll talk about this more tomorrow when we do a used car market update.

But this story in automotive news piqued my attention.

Depreciating used electric vehicles are about to cost automaker finance companies billions of dollars.

So Dad, we have a glut of EVs coming up soon.

We will.

Yep.

And these vehicles are tremendously underwater.

Can you explain what this headline means and why we should care?

Yes.

Lease vehicles, every lease vehicle has a residual value, which is what the manufacturer thought

the future value of the vehicle would be.

So it's based on a certain percentage of depreciation of a vehicle.

And the bets that leasing companies made on EVs is going to come back and bite them in the ass.

What do I mean by that?

Nothing has depreciated faster over the last two or three years than EVs have.

And over the next year and a half, two years, we will have a plethora of EVs coming back into the market.

Leases that will come due.

And the lease residual values in order to get the payment at an acceptable level for customers were artificially high.

So it meant like the residual might be $50,000 on an $80,000 EV.

And the reality might be that it's a $30,000 car at the auction.

Yeah, and if I made that, I just want to try and very directly cut through some of the jargon here.

When you lease a car, this residual value term that you're alluding to is the set price that the manufacturer says the vehicle...

The captive finance company, I should say, the leasing company says the vehicle is going to be worth at the end of the term.

It hopes that the vehicle is going to be worth it.

This is a guess.

They have all sorts of actuaries and people like that that they employ to come up with these numbers.

And to your point, they can sometimes be wrong.

Sometimes they can do that intentionally to try and get to payments that make sense.

You pay for the depreciation during a lease.

You do not pay for the whole vehicle.

And so to your point, I just want to really cut through because to some people, they might not know what a residual value is.

That number, in your example, $50,000 is what the manufacturer said it's going to be worth at the end of the lease.

The vehicle is now actually only worth $30,000.

What is the consumer going to do?

What is the person who leased the vehicle going to do?

They're going to return the lease.

There's no reason for them to buy out the lease.

So then the leasing company has a vehicle that they thought was going to be worth $50,000.

That's actually worth $30,000.

These leasing companies are about to lose billions of dollars.

Yes.

The estimate is, according to the article, on average, most of these EVs will be overvalued,

residual-wise, the guaranteed future value that they predicted it would have,

by an average of $10,000 per vehicle.

And between now and a year and a half from now, we can do the math.

There's 800,000 EV leases coming due.

That's $8 billion.

Yeah, $10,000 a mistake per vehicle.

That's $8 billion that these lease companies are going to have to eat.

Now, will it put them out of business?

No.

Will it get them to rethink how they calculate what future residual values would be,

especially on EVs?

Oh, you bet your ass it will.

Will it negatively impact future payments of EVs on leases?

Yeah, I would think so, because they're not going to be nearly as aggressive moving forward.

So this could have huge impacts as to how it impacts the market for new cars,

both the ICE hybrid and EV.

Yeah, it's going to be less aggressive lease programs is what you should anticipate seeing.

And that's the takeaway here, less aggressive lease programs for the remainder of 2026.

Yeah, let's remind everyone today's show is brought to you by caredge.com.

Again, folks, for those of you that are unfamiliar, go to caredge.com and learn more.

We provide a car buying service.

We take care of research, dealer outreach, and even negotiation.

You tell us what you want.

We'll contact dealers, compare our offers, and get you the best deal.

We also have caredge.com slash beta.

That's a new car search that we've been working on.

So we encourage folks to check that out as well and share some feedback in the chat,

as well as back there on the website.

We'll be back tomorrow with a used car market update.

So stay tuned for that.

We appreciate everyone tuning in.

And yeah, we'll be back here tomorrow.

Yeah, thank you everybody for being here.

And we look forward to seeing you here again tomorrow at noon Eastern, nine Pacific time.

And you figure out your own damn time zone.

Hi, you're listening to meditating with Jan from Toyota.

Soften your focus and visualize yourself off-roading in a Tacoma.

Now engage your senses.

What do you hear?

A donkey.

Because you're driving the kids to a farm sanctuary in a Grand Highlander.

Breathe in, breathe out, and go from dreaming it to driving it today.

Dealer inventory may vary.

See your participating Toyota dealer for details.

Event ends March 31st.

Toyota, let's go places.

This is Mike Ballo of Lexicon Valley.

And I'm Bob Garfield.

Are you one of those people who sometimes uses words?

Do you communicate or acquire information with, you know, language?

Hey, us too.

So join us on Lexicon Valley to tru over the history, culture, and many mysteries of English.

Plus some wisecracks.

Find us on one of those apps where people listen to podcasts.

The END of Car Dealers Is NEAR | Episode 1042

About this episode

Toyota Tacoma

Toyota Grand Highlander

dealer outreach

car buying service

Rivian

direct to consumer sales

no federal law

precedent

Tesla

ballot initiatives

franchise agreements

lawsuits

Dealers Association

markup

good is a relative term

consumers perception

walled garden

dealer inventory may vary

transparent

level playing field

oil change

average asking price

calling up car dealers

Mitsubishi Outlander

blackbook data

what's my car worth

MMR

depreciating used electric vehicles

residual value

lease payment

caredge.com

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