It’s only a matter of time before all dealerships go to a no-haggle price, online-only sales structure as inventory shortages across the nation prevail. Many buyers have wished for an easy car shopping experience from start to finish and Ford is looking to do just that. The American automaker recently announced that it’s looking to sell its forthcoming electric vehicles (EVs) 100 percent online and at a fixed price.  

Ford’s CEO says the brand will switch to 100-percent online sales for its EVs

The days are coming when you can easily click on a car online and have it delivered to your door. Well, they’re technically already here with used car retailers like Carvana and Vroom. But for new cars, it’s a different story. Due to franchise laws, a dealership network is needed to sell new cars to consumers. However, Ford looks to change this in the near future by offering no-haggle pricing and straight-to-your-door deliveries for its EV sales.

Ford’s CEO, Jim Farley, said during Bernstein’s Annual Strategic Decisions Conference:

“Target could have gone away, but they didn’t. They bolted on an e-commerce platform and then they use their physical store to add groceries and make returns much easier than Amazon. They use their expertise as a physical retailer to their advantage, but they modernize 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 got to go to 100% online. The vehicle, there’s no inventory, goes directly to the customer, 100% remote pickup and delivery.”

Ford isn’t looking to get rid of its physical stores just yet

In case you’re wondering, Ford isn’t planning on completely getting rid of its dealerships just yet. Instead, it plans to keep them for non-EV sales. Road and Track noted that Ford is looking to move to a “100-percent digital architecture that could support could support online transactions, not that all tractions taking place online” when it comes to its non-electrified vehicles.

Farley also noted that the physical dealership locations will have a huge opportunity to get an edge over competitors. When it comes to EVs, one of those competitors is Tesla, which has used this sales model for some time. In fact, Ford aims to beat out Tesla in EV sales. Farley said that it has the capacity to produce 600,000 EVs, which is a far cry from Tesla’s 936,000 deliveries last year. But Farley is hopeful as he believes EV prices will eventually lower to around $25,000 as the cost of batteries gets cheaper.

Engadget noted that the dealership stores will theoretically also act as customer services and delivery centers where customers can pick up their online orders.  

Which EVs will Ford sell online?

So far, it looks like the Ford Mustang Mach-E and Ford F-150 Lightning would be prime candidates for fully online sales. However, let’s keep in mind that this news is merely an announcement as no concrete sales dates have been put in place yet. We’ll keep you posted as to when Ford will offer this new sales structure.