Ford CEO suggests new EV sales model that's ‘100%’ online

Ford CEO Jim Farley said the brand’s electric vehicles may shift to fixed prices and completely online sales. In a speech today at an IBM conference, Farley described a future where Ford dealerships would no longer stock inventory but serve as customer service centers for picking up online orders or repairing existing vehicles — with buyers also having the option for home delivery. In this hypothetical scheme, eliminating car dealerships would put an end to haggling with salespeople.

“We got to go to non-negotiated price,” said Farley. Naturally, he also used his speech to throw some jabs at competitors.

“I believe some Mach-E and Lightning customers would love to have a Mustang for the weekend. Maybe they want a Super Duty. I can do that,” Farley said, “They can’t.”

The company announced plans this year to be the top EV car maker in the world, hoping to beat out Tesla and other companies with strong EV brands such as BMW, Nissan and Kia. Farley said Ford aims to have the capacity to produce 600,000 EVs by 2023, a notably smaller figure than the 936,000 deliveries that Tesla made last year.

The CEO said he believes that prices for EVs will lower to an average of $25,000, as the cost of batteries and distribution gets cheaper.

Lincoln is already experimenting with how it sells cars, as Autoblog highlights a few months ago, though certainly not to the extreme degree Farley suggests for Ford EVs.