Photo: Buick
General Motors will be buying out the Buick selling rights from United States dealers that won't or can't invest in the brand’s all-electric future.
This move falls in line with the previous statements General Motors made back in June about their plan to go completely electric by 2030. Global Vice President of Buick and GMC, Duncan Aldred, said in a recent interview that in total there are 2,000 Buick franchise dealers in the United States. All of them will be offered a buyout for the brand.
Once this offer is accepted, the respective dealer will no longer have the official rights to sell the Buick brand. Aldred also stated that nearly every dealer that sells Buicks has at least one other GM brand in their portfolio. However, this will not affect their business with other such models, he mentioned.
The VP did not go into details about how many dealerships are currently willing to take the deal. But we could form a general idea based on the similarities between this scenario and the one with the Cadillac buyouts, completed not even a year ago.
Cadillac Global Vice President Rory Harvey publicly stated that 315 Caddy dealerships in the U.S. took the $200,000 offer, whereas the remaining 560 dealers chose the opposite.
If you’re wondering why some of them would take the offer, whereas others won’t, it mainly boils down to a simple investment choice. On one hand, electric cars require less maintenance than conventional-fueled cars. This would be one incentive for a dealership to sell EVs.
On the other hand, the upgrades for the infrastructure required don’t come cheap. Charging stations aside, there’s the matter of the cables running through the building itself. In some extreme cases, the interior space could become a veritable construction site that would be off-limits to the general public, and hurt the business in more than one way.
As to when this offer will be made, VP Duncan Aldred did not mention. However, Buick has plans to launch its first EV, currently named the Buick Wildcat EV Concept, in 2024. That could mean that phones might be ringing off their hooks sooner rather than later.
Once this offer is accepted, the respective dealer will no longer have the official rights to sell the Buick brand. Aldred also stated that nearly every dealer that sells Buicks has at least one other GM brand in their portfolio. However, this will not affect their business with other such models, he mentioned.
The VP did not go into details about how many dealerships are currently willing to take the deal. But we could form a general idea based on the similarities between this scenario and the one with the Cadillac buyouts, completed not even a year ago.
Cadillac Global Vice President Rory Harvey publicly stated that 315 Caddy dealerships in the U.S. took the $200,000 offer, whereas the remaining 560 dealers chose the opposite.
If you’re wondering why some of them would take the offer, whereas others won’t, it mainly boils down to a simple investment choice. On one hand, electric cars require less maintenance than conventional-fueled cars. This would be one incentive for a dealership to sell EVs.
On the other hand, the upgrades for the infrastructure required don’t come cheap. Charging stations aside, there’s the matter of the cables running through the building itself. In some extreme cases, the interior space could become a veritable construction site that would be off-limits to the general public, and hurt the business in more than one way.
As to when this offer will be made, VP Duncan Aldred did not mention. However, Buick has plans to launch its first EV, currently named the Buick Wildcat EV Concept, in 2024. That could mean that phones might be ringing off their hooks sooner rather than later.
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