Vw moving to a direct sales model

AndyBoBandy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122196324#Comment_122196324

What is the deal with test drives and going to see a car in the likes of Tesla? I've never been to a Tesla centre before.

From time to time Tesla have a new Model 3 parked at their Athenry supercharger, and it's set up for remote test drives… you just register online/via their app, and then arrive at your designated time and the app will give you access to the car… can all be done without interacting with a single human being.

Outside of they they have the 3 showrooms on the island, as well as some pop up showrooms/test drive locations from time to time in random areas…

SharkMX

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122195078#Comment_122195078

Im pretty sure the cause of my death will be the touch screen on my fancy new car that i got 6 months ago. I spend more time looking at it to try and get the right menu or touch the right button than i ever did looking at my phone. Even getting the heater on or the radio. Its a death waiting to happen.

bazz26

None of this will benefit the consumer. Yes it will reduce operational costs for manufacturers but that's the main objective here, those savings certainly won't be passed on to consumers.

Mad_Lad

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122196721#Comment_122196721

My Missus hated driving the id3 and said it was really dangerous and she hated the steering constantly pulling against her and the fact that turning it off was buried in menus.

The id3 was definitely a frustrating car with crap interior, I'd turn up the stereo and the doors would rattle like they were about to fall off, plastics you'd see in the caddy van.

But, the entire VW range is almost like this and it's just lazy copy paste design, they all look the same inside, few minor differences here and there but the money they save just plonking a screen on the dash to control everything, it's the same in every car, they can change the software for different models and job done. Lazy.

Seat and Skoda are following suit now too, maybe not so heavily but this tech is creeping in.

Yep I think the insurance companies are going to ride people in the future for all this nonsense.

I'm not anti tech but this technology for the sake of technology is not good, it's just an excuse for manufacturers to make a lot more money, SUV = massive premiums over the hatchback and add to this the tech. People have fallen for it.

Last week I was in a garage after getting a roll for lunch and had sat in the car, a young Woman, in her 20s got out, phone in hand and from the time she got out of the car to the time she filled up the car her head was in the phone the entire time and she couldn't even walk in to pay for the petrol but her head was still in the phone.

Definitely a Zombie apocalypse.

colm_mcm

My initial thought is this will reduce competition between dealers and make shopping around not an option.
On the other hand, there’s a tiny possibility that it might make the process of buying a car more efficient, and could reduce their overhead which might make them more competitive.
My gut feeling is that this won’t benefit the customer overall, but VW still have to be competitive vs other brands.

Mad_Lad

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122196722#Comment_122196722

Nothing the car manufacturers do is to benefit the customer, all they want to do is keep regulators happy with emissions and make profit, look how much they charge people for the SUV, thousands more compared to the hatchback and people have fallen into the trap. Estate cars are far more practical but you hardly see one now, all these gigantic SUV and getting larger and more and more expensive.

BailMeOut

buying a car from a dealer is one of the things I always absolutely dread (and I have bought a lot of cars). They play games with you and you always feel completely shafted so I for one will be quite happy ordering a car like I order something from Amazon.

User1998

What about their used car sales? Tesla don’t sell used cars so curious how VW will approach this

useless

Will be interesting to see how it'll play out in the early stages with tradein values. My brother does high mileage and changes his car for approximately the same model every two years. Does a tour of four different dealers of the same marque in his part of the country, takes a whole bloody day and he has to listen to an inordinate amount of salesman BS, but generally his price to change drops by several thousand euro over the course of the following week as the dealers call him back. I think last time out the first offer (price to change) was 17,500 and the final one (from the same dealer) was 13,000.

With this new sales model, I assume he gets one offer, take it or leave it, and I'd bet my house it'll be a lot closer to 17,500 than 13,000 as per the example above. I can't see any other outcome here except for the end customer paying more for cars.

In addition, VW Group are really going to need to up their game digitally over the next 12-18 months in preparation for this. Their current websites are muck, really confusing configurators, random lines of code displayed on screen, really slow performance, lack of information on options etc. Hopefully they'll bin it all and start with a group platform that they can use for all their brands.

yagan

It will certainly test brand loyalty. It's a great opportunity for rivals to offer a VW trade in discount, kind of like the deals mobile phone companies offer to switch to their network.

BrianD3

Will this change by a big player like VW encourage the further "appliancification" of cars? It seems good that parasitic middlemen (salesmen in glass palaces) are cut out, also the practice of "doing deals" with sleazy salesmen and "trading in" cars long before they have reached the end of their service lives are anachronisms. I would like to see new cars get considerably cheaper and changes in consumer beahviour with people keeping their cars much longer. There would still be a second hand market but it would be smaller and there would be fewer used car dealers and generally much less bullsh*t.

Seth Brundle

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122196721#Comment_122196721

have a look at this thread…

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058351760/euro-ncap-touchscreen-reliance

goochy

large dealer groups in the uk are making huge profits and being bought by US dealer groups - manufacturers see this and what more of the pie but they dont realise whats involved in a motor trade business

Calahonda52

The shut up dealer ships will give more accommodation for the IPA, or what ever its called now

Furze99

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122196905#Comment_122196905

That VW Lane Assist feature is not suited to Irish rural roads. I'd be fine with it on a motorway or good dual carriageway but it keeps interfering with the steering on narrow rural roads. I can turn it off but if you stop and and set off again, the bloody thing is back. Can't find anything in their menu to turn it off by default. Anyone any idea?

fits

Another feature I genuinely have no issue with. It works find for me. I don’t live in a metropolis.

ThreeGreens

I can imagine this pushing buyers away from VW.

Up to now, if you were interested in a VW model, you went to a dealer and got a price/trade in value. If you wanted to shop around, you went to another VW dealer. If you still weren't happy, you could go to another VW dealer, chasing the best price for the car that you wanted.

Now, it seems that your trade in price will be set and the same across all dealers. So if you want to show around, you'll have no option but to at least consider other brands and check them out. At least some of those people, who wanted a VW, will change their mind after looking at a difference brand, which they probably would never have looked at before.

_Kaiser_

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122197718#Comment_122197718

Might be worth checking if you can disable it via VCDS or something like OBDEleven.

If so it might be worth investing in the latter or getting an independent dealer with access to the former to take a look.

Furze99

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122197736#Comment_122197736

I can drive fine on rural roads without having the steering pulled this way & that on some ad hoc basis. There's no lines or lanes on these road, just a ditch at variable distance to the road. It should be possible to turn this assist off by default and then switch it on if you want it, not the VW way of thinking though. Unless I'm missing something.

Mr Q

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122198183#Comment_122198183

I don't think it is just a VW thing. I think for the NCAP rating to be better it is always on when you start a journey, with the option to turn off.

Furze99

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122198264#Comment_122198264

You could well be right? In which case something quite amiss with regulations. I'll ask the dealer next time it's in for service if they can disable or change it.

Mad_Lad

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122197435#Comment_122197435

Unfortunately NCAP has 0 power, one reason Dacia got such poor safety ratings was not so much structural but because they don't have that electronic crap that bings and bongs and costs more to the buyer with absolutely no benefits.

Cme 2025 all cars have to have this sh1t and won't be able to turn it off again, E.U interference, seems all the E.U are good for is interference.

Imagine someone who likes driving a car and has to mostly drive country roads with the car binging and bonging constantly and constantly pulling the steering in your hands and you won't be able to turn it off ? this is for safety, would the E.U ever go and f1ck itself !

What they should concentrate is making people better drivers without all this electronic sh1t and all it does is make people dumber and some of the self driving aids even promote the use of using mobile phones in cars as they foolishly think " sure the car will brake itself and prevent a crash happening = that is completely false, but they believe it and browse their phone instead of looking at the road.

There needs to be punishment for using phones in cars, proper detection and proper fines and suspended license but at the end of the day isn't it hypnotical banning phone use when cars are now just entertainment centres on wheels ?

https://www.theverge.com/23801545/car-infotainment-customer-satisifaction-survey-jd-power

Mad_Lad

Deleted as quoted test failed to appear.

murpho999

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122197718#Comment_122197718

Do you think Irish rural roads are a special type of road all to themselves? Been on penty of narrow country roads around Europe.

Either way lane assist is not an issue on these roads as it's not functioning due to general lack of road markings.

Anyhow if it's on it's only a slight tug that can be overridden very easily. Long used to it now,don't bother switching it off and now never an issue.

Mad_Lad

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122197736#Comment_122197736

There's no way fits you drive your id3 on your local roads without the steering pulling , you might have gotten used to it but bugged the hell out of me + always had to go through menu to turn it off.

Mad_Lad

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122198481#Comment_122198481

These systems have different names but the one in the id3 used to pull the steering on rural roads if it thought I was getting too close to the centre lane and it detected even the side of the roads, the ditch, it's not a nice experience, I don't like it.

The Kia cee'd does the same but I just press a very easy to access button and it's off, unlike the id3 having to go into menus.

While you're used to it doesn't mean everyone should have to put up with it that doesn't like or want it especially after it's not allowed come 2025 to turn it off.

There is however a benefit to those systems that can properly steer on good roads, but all this tech should be optional.

fits

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122198518#Comment_122198518

occasionally it does a slight correction yes. It doesn’t bother me. In fact I kinda miss it in the other car.

Furze99

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122198481#Comment_122198481

Like MadLad says, 'Lane Assist' be fine on roads that have paint markings but round here it seems to come in and out erratically depending on the distance from the car to a roadside ditch or garden wall/ fence at any point. It's just plain annoying and does nothing at all to promote safety. The mad thing is that you can't choose to have it on or off by default and on recent VWs you have to be pressing buttons and looking at menus. A car has no business interfering with steering on such roads.

Mad_Lad

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122198736#Comment_122198736

On some of my narrow roads where there is a road markings the id3 was always pulling the steering. Frustrating. Going through the menus to turn it off was irritating, the whole car was just irritating to be honest, if I had spent more time in it rather than a 30 min test drive I wouldn't have got the car in the first place but my own priority wasn't the infotainment it was how the car drove, had I turned up the stereo loud enough I would have heard the doors rattle like they were going to fall off and only after I got it I realised there were no rear door speakers, in a 41K car.

It will be a very long time before I buy a VW again based on my experience with their modern cars if this is the future and the future of the auto industry in general I will just buy older and older cars, in fact I won't be buying new cars ever again, complete waste of money for the crap you get today.

Geuze

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122196916#Comment_122196916

Yes.

A few years ago we visited a few Skoda dealers and without much haggling, got 8.26% off the list price.

It looks like this won't be possible with VW in the future?