Best Buy Eyes EVs
Electronics retailer Best Buy raised a few eyebrows when it began selling Brammo electric motorcycles alongside its flatscreens and Xboxes a few years back. Two years after that agreement was announced, however, Brammos are sold at only three West Coats Best Buys (one here in Portland, OR, two in California) and Brammo is expanding its own dealership network independently of the big box chain. Was Best Buy’s Brammo experiment a disappointment? If so, it’s not stopping the retailer from pursuing other electric vehicle opportunities, as Best Buy’s mobility and transportation honcho Chad Bell tells Automotive News [sub] that it’s talking to electric car firms about a possible retail deal.
We are having conversations with some of the startups. I would say the conversations are going well. We are very excited about several partnerships that we can’t talk about yet. We probably get more traffic in a weekend than some of these dealers do in a month. The benefits for a small automaker trying to cobble together a sales and service network are obvious.
And despite the emphasis on startups and his use of the term “cobble together,” Bell insists that electric mobility is a long-term strategy for Best Buy.
According to Bell, even business opportunities like contracts for special EV customer training for dealerships are a possibility. But the shape of EV dealership experiences is still unclear, as (for example) Tesla has insisted that it doesn’t need a widespread dealer network because EVs need “next to no maintenance.” But clearly EVs aren’t fundamentally different from gas-powered cars in their needs for a service network. For example Tesla has not been able to deploy a multi-speed EV transmission on its Roadster (in fact, Brammo just announced what appears to be the first geared electric vehicle), and even its single-speed Roadster needs a $1,000 annual “tune up.” As geared EVs become more common, their maintenance and service needs will likely increase, and doing without dealers will become less of an option. Whether Best Buy and its “Geek Squad” can step into that breach (let alone actually sellelectric cars) remains very much to be seen.
More by Edward Niedermeyer
Latest Car Reviews
Read moreLatest Product Reviews
Read moreRecent Comments
- Ltcmgm78 Just what we need to do: add more EVs that require a charging station! We own a Volt. We charge at home. We bought the Volt off-lease. We're retired and can do all our daily errands without burning any gasoline. For us this works, but we no longer have a work commute.
- Michael S6 Given the choice between the Hornet R/T and the Alfa, I'd pick an Uber.
- Michael S6 Nissan seems to be doing well at the low end of the market with their small cars and cuv. Competitiveness evaporates as you move up to larger size cars and suvs.
- Cprescott As long as they infest their products with CVT's, there is no reason to buy their products. Nissan's execution of CVT's is lackluster on a good day - not dependable and bad in experience of use. The brand has become like Mitsubishi - will sell to anyone with a pulse to get financed.
- Lorenzo I'd like to believe, I want to believe, having had good FoMoCo vehicles - my aunt's old 1956 Fairlane, 1963 Falcon, 1968 Montego - but if Jim Farley is saying it, I can't believe it. It's been said that he goes with whatever the last person he talked to suggested. That's not the kind of guy you want running a $180 billion dollar company.
Comments
Join the conversation
Teslas require a $1,000 a year in maintenance in addition to the R-compound tires required to keep their extra thousand pounds of mass over a comparable IC car on the road? The tire replacements are basically at what would be oil change intervals, and of course they're over $700 compared to $20 to $100 for a typical actual oil change. My Honda has averaged out to about $60 a year in maintenance after 4 years plus one set of tires at $530, and it probably has more miles than any two Teslas. Working people can't afford these toys. BB is off my list of approved vendors for throwing in with the companies who are aligned to benefit at the cost of our freedom.
Having gears in an electric car is proof of failure and not something to be proud of. And maintenance is different in an electric vehicle. Tires and break pads need to be changed like in a normal car but you don't need a specialised mechanic for that. And the rest shouldn't break (electric engine) or makes it a write off (battery)