This article takes an off-the-cuff comment from the CEO of Ford and reads too much into it IMO. He wasn’t saying dealerships are going away; he was actually saying the opposite. The point he was making was that Ford is going to adopt some of Tesla’s practices while using the dealership network to compete with them.
Here’s the quote with more context:
“I believe for retail, we have to -- it's kind of like what happened between Amazon and Target. Target could have gone away, but they didn't. They bolted on an e-commerce platform and then they used their physical store to add groceries and return -- make returns really much easier than Amazon. They used their expertise as a physical retailer to their advantage, but they modernized the e-commerce piece. So it would be really easy to do business with them. It's exactly what we have to do on the retail side. We got to go to non-negotiated price. We've got to go to a 100% online, the vehicle there is no inventory goes directly to the customer, 100% remote pickup and delivery, but then we have this opportunity to use our physical presence, they outperform them. Like, 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, they can't do that, unless they ran a Ford.”
Here’s the quote with more context: “I believe for retail, we have to -- it's kind of like what happened between Amazon and Target. Target could have gone away, but they didn't. They bolted on an e-commerce platform and then they used their physical store to add groceries and return -- make returns really much easier than Amazon. They used their expertise as a physical retailer to their advantage, but they modernized the e-commerce piece. So it would be really easy to do business with them. It's exactly what we have to do on the retail side. We got to go to non-negotiated price. We've got to go to a 100% online, the vehicle there is no inventory goes directly to the customer, 100% remote pickup and delivery, but then we have this opportunity to use our physical presence, they outperform them. Like, 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, they can't do that, unless they ran a Ford.”
Source: https://seekingalpha.com/article/4515793-ford-motor-company-...