Do (or should) Toyota dealers provide courtesy charging for Toyota Primes and Plug-ins?

EVsalespro, a good idea, but very sad that has to exist at all. Not a lot of salespeople on that list.

/ salesperson rant mode on
Sales are sales. What I mean is that sales is a profession, for any market segment - doesn't matter... houses, widgets, bicycles, computers, autos. A real professional will distill the difficult to understand jargon down to easy to digest words for the prospective customer. In fact, a real sales professional can pack up their sales knowledge and easily move from one industry to another and still be very successful.

Thirty second sales course...
Fact > Bridge > Benefit (with added demonstration and trial closing question)
"This is the included charging cable. You know, a lot of times you don't even need to fill it with gas, or you can delay that gas station trip. This is the charging port right here on the right side of your car. You plug this charger into your wall socket in your garage and put the handle in here, and you could cut your gas bills in half, depending how far it is to work and back. Is that something that you'd feel comfortable doing with your new Prime?"

A real salesperson is a chameleon and should morph into a fan of everything they could possibly sell to prospective customers. Those are the true professionals, unbiased, and under a commission or spiff system that can clean up, and gain repeat sales from their past customers. Top of their class, and they will bewilder lesser salespeople. I have worked with salespeople like this, and as a previous dealer/owner (not cars) I was amazed at their performance. Those are the people I had teach the other salespeople how they did what they do. Twenty years later, I remain amazed at those few professionals. They are still doing very well, I have no doubt.

Sales isn't rocket science, but like any profession, it takes dedication and devotion of work to achieve results. Everyone gains when this happens - the owner/dealer, the salesperson, and of course, the customer, which means everything.

It is infuriating there are still anti-EV salespeople out there attempting to divert prospective EV or hybrid sales to their own favorite beloved gas guzzlers, or get $100 better spiffs for doing so. Don't get me wrong here. If I was in auto sales, and a hyped-up customer absolutely wanted to test drive, and then buy a Hummer, and I could get them one, I would sell it in a second. I have family obligations, a job I want to continue with, and a dealer/owner that wants me to sell their stuff and excel for the company. If I had moral problems selling those, I would consider changing dealerships. Some do (and good for them! ) But do the deal and don't be preachy with the customer. I've seen it, I've witnessed it, and have been an angry target of salesperson's bias. But as a professional salesperson, be respectful of the customers wishes and needs and move forward with it, and of course, absolutely know the vehicle(s) to be able to answer their questions and concerns, and to the best of one's ability. Sadly a lot of auto sales people just don't even bother to study the 15 or so models they might sell. Just plain lazy.

The anti-EV and anti-hybrid salespeople (or dealerships) thing just irks me though. The world is changing rapidly and they will soon find their commission checks slimming down and they just won't know why. We call these people/dealerships dinosaurs. Problem is, they don't know it yet, and their denial of it will just hurt them more. Even anti-EV former GM president Bob Lutz admits the gas-pro dealerships will all soon go out of business, and could bring their brand down with them. Smart guy, maybe a little non-PC and anti-EV bias at times, but he can predict the future pretty well I think.

One year into my Prime, the salesperson who sold me my vehicle (I ordered it) probably still doesn't know much more about it than they did last April. I know they don't bring it up or discuss the Prime unless someone walks in and asks about it first, because I recently asked her about the model. The margins are still low, and that's a problem for sales. And that is unfortunate. And they still aren't pre-charged up. Urp. .

\ salesperson rant mode off

 

The one who sold me the Prime I bought three days ago was pretty knowledgeable about it, but yeah, not charged up. I had an appointment to see a Prime and the one I saw (and bought) was being "charged up" via level 1 and was only about 1/3 charged when I got there. But they did send me out with a full tank of gas! I used a small amount of gas getting home from there because I had to drive home 14 miles on less than 1/3 of a charge, but since then I haven't used a drop. I know it's silly to make you wait an hour or two for a "full charge" to send you home with, but still....

 

It is silly. How long did they have between knowing that you would be in to when you were there to pick up the car? Even L1 is less than a day. Mine didn't even prep the car properly, and never even thought of plugging it in.

I might be real biased, as I've been in sales my entire life to earn a living. In semi retirement, I now work at an upscale food store. The person coming in to buy the 99 cent small package of peanut butter cups or dark chocolate almonds is every bit as important a customer as the $250 full cart weekly sale. And maybe even more so, as we want them to become the $250 full cart customer. From upon entering the store to thanking them as they leave, always 100% as important, and with 100% enthusiasm all the way through. Not working on commission now, but that should never ever matter. I really need to write a book targeting this new somewhat confused generation, for those that can read.

 

According to Plugshare, this is a list of dealers around here that offer charging, some even at 24 hours. Chevrolet, Ford, Nissan, VW, BMW, Tesla, Kia, Mercedes, Porsche, Mitsubishi, Hyundai and Honda. Notice who's missing.

 

I work at Toyota and we just got a charging station installed. That being said I have never seen a prime other than mine on the station. Don’t even know if the salesman know it is there

 

Chrysler is missing.

 

And Toyota.

 

It was a joke. I knew what you were trying to get at.

 

I know, I've been here long enough.

 

The manufacturers are incentivised by laws in the various States, particularly States like California which mandate the sales of electric vehicles or variants in order for the manufacturer to be able to sell the large profit-fat sleds. Once manufacturers are forcibly selling electric vehicles, they have to promote those sales, which is best done by customer rebates and salespeople bonuses.
Unfortunately, it's not a perfect system, but until the general public experiences electric vehicles, in all configurations including Stupid Useless Vehicles and trucks, we'll need this "pump primer".

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.
AChoiredTaste.com

Yeah, but be careful; I have been to The Norm Reeves Honda and Norm Reeves VW stores, and they charge 5 to $10 per charge!! So yes, they may have charging available, and by the way it's not 24 hours a day for these dealers they do lock up at night, but it's far from being "available". I'm going to definitely have to explore the availability of Toyota Dealership chargers.

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AChoiredTaste.com

 

This is the nice part about Plugshare because this information is from members that actually visited these dealers and not only posted their experiences, but also posted photos showing what and where the stations are.

 

My Toyota dealer DOES have one free charging station; they made me swear not to reveal their identity because they say, many of clients who discover and use the charger abuse it: stay hooked up even when charged or throw cord carelessly on ground, etc. Can't blame them; customers can be jerks too! This is first Toyota dealer I've checked on. To be continued....

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AChoiredTaste.com

 

By the way, the ChargePoint app. offers the same features; I use it regularly and it's usually pretty good. Biggest problem, aside from so many missed opportunities by parks, shopping centers, libraries, etc., to offer charging, is the lousy performance of many L2 stations I've recently visited; they have fees based partially or totally on time, yet the power output frequently drops to nearly half (2 kWh or less) after about 10 minutes. So you hook up, check the charge rate, everything looks good, but if you loiter like me (just topping off), and recheck the rate after 10 or 15 minutes, you often find it has dropped tremendously. This is NOT GOOD (possibly illegal??)!!

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AChoiredTaste.com

 

Maybe someone can come up with a way to link your business activity to the charger usage?

It strikes me that if you can prove that you're spending more money at a given location because they offer a car charger, they would have all the ammo they need to justify the cost of good charging service.

Historically this worked fine in the past with ordinary parking spaces- you'd get a validation sticker or stamp to offset the parking cost.

After all, the business owners have a right to separate the paying customers from the kilowatt gypsies.

 

In some states it is illegal to charge by the kWh, so charging by time is the best way to do it.
As for charging more the longer you are plugged in, I actually prefer that method. And they should continue charging until the car leaves the designated charging spot.

 

I have no problem with your point of view. My problem is that when I'm sitting here plugged in, I expect the car to take a certain amount of time to get charged. If the power to the car drops dramatically, the amount of time to charge the car can be increased substantially, wasting my time and resulting in higher fees. I'm almost always in or near the car during charging, scheduling clients, etc.

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.
AChoiredTaste.com

 

The dealers certainly should charge the battery before delivery. When my Prius Prime was delivered to me I asked the salesman if it were charged and he said they "Didn't have it set up yet." I looked in the hatch and there was charging cable, looked at the showroom floor area and it was lighted so I knew they musta had 120v. I accepted the car and went home and charged it myself. It is a courtesy for the dealer to charge the battery-after all, they gave me a full tank of gasoline!

 

Today's quality standards, particularly considering the outrageous price of new cars, demands a MINIMUM of full gasoline tank, and a fully charged traction battery for plugin hybrids. Unfortunately clients have become used to the terrible service provided by dealers, particularly domestic car dealers. I absolutely would refuse delivery of a car, after a dealer had promised it to be ready. In addition the dealer must give a thorough "turn over" to the client, explaining common features and the operation of common/critical controls. My purchase experience of the 2017 Prius Prime met all those criteria, AND the car was delivered to my home since I didn't have anyone to help me pick it up. Everybody should be treated that way!


Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.
AChoiredTaste.com

 

I had a new Zero turn mower delivered yesterday and it came with one tank half full. Another type of dealer but it's ironic it holds 11 gallons.
They actually make big commercial mowers that are battery operated but very expensive.

 

In those screwball states, charging a fee based on KWh makes you into an electric utility, so a business would have to jump through all the hoops to become a licensed electric utility in order to charge by the KWh , which is not going to happen. Many, but not all, states have revised their regulations to specifically exclude charging stations from this policy.