Scout Motors’ plan to ditch sellers is strictly what prospects need

Lower than 12 hours after Scout Motors unveiled a pair of buzzy electrified automobiles final week, automobile sellers began threatening lawsuits.

Scout, which is backed by Volkswagen, thinks that sellers are historical past. It could quite promote its EVs on to shoppers, following within the footsteps of Tesla, Rivian, and Polestar in utterly rethinking the enterprise of automobile promoting. However not like these manufacturers, it’s doing so whereas receiving monetary help from an incumbent automaker: VW. 

But when the corporate is nervous about difficult a century-old enterprise mannequin, it isn’t displaying it.

“Scout is a one hundred pc separate model, separate entity, separate construction, separate the whole lot,” Scout CEO Scott Keogh mentioned final week, noting that the Scout shopping for expertise shall be “clear, tremendous quick, and tremendous simple.”  

To make that occur, Scout Motors is relying closely on a digital platform that it’s constructing in-house. “Scout Motors doesn’t have any legacy equipment,” Cody Thacker, Scout’s VP of development, mentioned. “We saved asking ourselves, if an OEM might begin over once more, what would they do in another way?” 

This clean-sheet strategy is attempting to remake automobile shopping for, one of the crucial loathed monetary transactions Individuals undergo. In keeping with analysis compiled by Scout, the car-buying expertise consumes a mean of 13 hours, 31 minutes per shopper. Simply 8 p.c of shoppers have excessive or very excessive belief in sellers, leading to greater than 180,000 dealer-related complaints to the Federal Commerce Fee yearly. And practically 70 p.c of shoppers choose impartial service outlets over seller servicing due to points like overcharging and delays. 

Add in the truth that, nationwide, 49 p.c of sellers are “not excited in any respect” to promote EVs, and Scout sees its rationale for smoothing out the expertise. It additionally needs to extra carefully management buyer information, permitting the corporate to focus on gross sales in sure areas, management automobile provides, and modify incentives to maintain the corporate worthwhile.

“A giant level of frustration for shoppers is that they need transparency in pricing and so they resent all of the hidden charges and markups. Solely by a direct-to-consumer mannequin can we sort out these head on and resolve them,” Thacker mentioned. 

Scout envisions its gross sales platform as a spot the place prospects can do all of the issues they’d usually do at a dealership, like buy equipment, arrange service appointments, and get particulars about over-the-air updates. However as a substitute of chatting with a human seller, they could as a substitute encounter an AI-powered chatbot. (AI chatbots have been a combined bag for quite a lot of industries, however the automotive area, particularly, has struggled to make them work.) 

Scout says that it’ll launch 25 brick-and-mortar “Scout Workshops” and “Scout Studios” across the nation within the subsequent 5 years, the place shoppers can test-drive and take a look at Scout automobiles. To make certain, automakers have tied themselves in knots, attempting to rename and rebrand dealerships and repair facilities in several methods to keep away from the unfavorable connotation they’ve for shoppers and circumvent the roundly hated system. 

The renderings Scout offered of the workshops are slick-looking and ethereal, with open work bays in full view of client areas, the place automobile homeowners can sit and sip espresso whereas overseeing the work achieved on their automobiles. Along with the brick-and-mortar areas, Scout will even provide shoppers who reside outdoors of a 45-minute radius of a Scout Workshop the choice to e book cellular service by Scout-certified companions. Scout will even provide Scout Studios, which can act as advertising and gross sales areas, very like the Tesla shops positioned in malls across the nation. 

The decades-old dealership mannequin advanced within the early 1900s, when firms like Ford and GM used to promote on to shoppers. As the auto trade took off, there have been growing considerations about monopolistic practices, and state franchise legal guidelines arose. 

Right now, dealerships have an iron grip on automobile gross sales, although some firms like Tesla, Rivian, and Polestar have discovered workarounds. Hyundai is testing direct-to-consumer gross sales by way of Amazon (albeit with sellers concerned), and Honda is promoting its Acura EV solely on-line. Sellers have made direct-to-consumer gross sales as tough as doable, submitting lawsuits and lobbying closely by their commerce group, the Nationwide Car Sellers Affiliation (NADA). 

True to kind, as quickly as Scout introduced its plan to go “Scout-to-Client” on Thursday, sellers started to rattle their sabers. NADA introduced that it “will problem this and all makes an attempt to promote direct in courthouses and statehouses throughout the nation.” 

A part of the difficulty that makes this battle a bit completely different is that Scout has shut ties to Volkswagen, and VW sellers have lengthy wished the corporate to launch a truck in North America as a result of they see it as a money cow. Certainly, Scout says that at the least two-thirds of the reservations that got here in for the reason that launch have been for the Scout Traveler SUV and one-third are for the Scout Terra truck. 

In fact, these are additionally the identical sellers that argued that “Individuals aren’t prepared for EVs,” in an open letter to the Biden administration lower than a yr in the past, stating that EVs have been simply sitting on their heaps (although one other research by Sierra Membership confirmed that 66 p.c of sellers don’t have any EVs on their heaps). NADA has been in a drawn-out battle with Tesla over its direct-to-consumer mannequin for a few years. 

On the coronary heart of the battle, in the end, is information and who controls it. “Solely by a direct gross sales mannequin can Scout Motors get a full 360-degree view of the shopper,” Thacker mentioned. “Because of this we are able to utterly affect the shopper journey. We will have unprecedented entry to buyer information, which drives deep buyer insights, which might then drive intelligence all through the enterprise.” Dealerships presently handle many of the buyer information and relationships, together with financing, within the present mannequin. 

Scout appears unfazed by seller threats. In an announcement, Scout spokesperson Lindsay Bago mentioned, “Simply as using franchised sellers could also be acceptable for some manufacturers and their prospects, using a direct gross sales mannequin finest helps our prospects and our strategic customer-first imaginative and prescient as we launch a brand new automobile platform, a brand new manufacturing middle, and a brand new retail community.”

Whereas Scout Motors has opened on-line reservations for his or her new Terra and Traveler automobiles that debuted final week, the corporate hasn’t nailed down particulars of a monetary associate for buying or leasing simply but. The corporate might faucet VW’s enormous monetary arm to deal with financing, although Thacker mentioned that portion of the equation continues to be being found out. “I feel what we are able to say immediately is that we would like this to be a seamless expertise,” Thacker mentioned.

Keogh, the CEO of Scout, is assured that the mannequin will work and help the patron in the proper means. “Scout needs to be old-school,” he advised The Verge final week, “We would like a model which you can have information belief and buyer belief, as a result of I feel it’s lastly into a spot that persons are apprehensive and rightfully so,” he continued. “We will management the shopper information, safe the shopper, and never badger our prospects. In order that’s what we’re trying to do, what it is going to do.”