Do you mean that dealers ask for bribes to customers to deliver cars, or that customers bribe dealers to skip the waiting list, or something like that?
In many states in the United States it is illegal to buy a car directly from the manufacturer or from a dealer owned by the manufacturer. In all states it is illegal for a manufacturer with an existing independent dealer network (which is to say, every manufacturer except the EV startups) to sell directly to the customer or to open a new factory-owned dealer.
So companies like Ford can only sell what independent dealers want to sell. You can go to the dealer and ask to buy a car sitting on the lot, and the dealer can just… not sell you the car. For any price. And it is also illegal for the manufacturer to force/coerce the dealer to sell it to you.
Of course the dealer can do softer things also, like talk down the car when you test drive or talk up the benefits of other cars. Or tell you that next year’s model will be much better than this one, so you should wait.
Additionally, most dealers do not actually pay for the car until it is sold to the customer (the manufacturer offers financing to the dealer, called “floor planning”).
Independent dealers do not want to sell EVs because of the perceived loss of service revenue. So they simply offer bad deals on the car that most customers would not take. The cars sit on the dealer’s lot, but that costs the dealer nothing (see above), even though Ford wants to sell an EV and customers want to buy EVs.
Its from when cars were new and it was hard to convince people to buy them to start with instead of just using their horses and buggies and manufacturers didn't spend money on marketing or shipping or sales outside of the local area. So independent car dealers setup shop, bought cars, shipped them across the states, marketed them, trained mechanics to service them, built gas stations, and built a customer base. Then as soon as all the marketing was done and sales started picking up in the area the manufacturer would pop in, undercut the local dealer who just spent all the money marketing and showing off cars and building up stock, buy out their skilled mechanics, and left the dealer with all the debt from advertising and training that they could no longer pay off.
For awhile they got away with it, but eventually it became obvious as to what manufacturers were doing and not having to advertise and built up a local car and mechanic and gas supply economy, so legal protections were put in place to protect the independent dealers from getting shafted.
Of course add on another 100 years of political fuckery all around the industry and you get the mess of today.
Yes exactly that. Either outright via "market adjustment fees" or through mandatory addons like $5,000 in paint protection film that's "already applied, so if you don't want it you'll have to wait until we get another one of this model and we're not sure when that will be..."
Then because of the monopolies the sibling comment mentions, you can't go elsewhere.
Do you mean that dealers ask for bribes to customers to deliver cars, or that customers bribe dealers to skip the waiting list, or something like that?