The one thing that actually moved our aged EV units was changing who we were targeting rather than dropping price further. We stopped trying to convert ICE buyers who were skeptical and started going after people already in the EV consideration funnel who had been shopping for months and had not pulled the trigger. Targeted outreach to our own service customers who drive high mileage and pay a lot in fuel was more productive than blanket discounting. We also started being very explicit about total cost of ownership in the conversation rather than leading with sticker, which helped with buyers who were fixating on the transaction price without accounting for fuel and maintenance savings. It did not solve the inventory problem but it improved our close rate on EV conversations without giving away more margin.

What is not being said out loud in allocation conversations is that OEMs pushing units to dealers right now are managing their own production schedule economics rather than dealer sell-through capacity. Taking the allocation hit to your relationship score is painful but a dealer sitting on 180-day-old metal is in a worse position than one who pushed back six months ago and took the relationship friction then. The allocation pressure is not going to stop until the OEM's own cost of carrying unsold units at the factory level exceeds the cost of dealer conflict.

The floor question is the right one and the honest answer is that it is being set by used EV values, not by anything you control. New EV pricing cannot sustainably go below comparable used EV pricing once you factor in warranty and finance program advantages, so when used values stop falling the new market stabilizes too. The problem is used EV values are still declining. On the allocation pressure: the dealers I know who are in the best position right now are the ones who took the relationship hit with their OEM rep six months ago and refused units they knew they could not sell. That conversation is uncomfortable once. Sitting on 120-day metal is uncomfortable every single day.

The floor question has a cleaner answer than most people give it: the floor is wherever the OEM captive finance arm decides to set residuals on the next lease cycle. That is the only lever that actually moves volume on aged EV units at scale without torching transaction price. Rate buydowns help at the margins but a customer staring at a $900 monthly payment on a vehicle with uncertain resale value is not going to be moved by 0.9 percent financing. What would actually move units is a manufacturer-backed lease with a residual set at a level that makes the payment competitive with a comparable ICE vehicle. The OEMs that have done this selectively are moving product. The ones waiting for organic demand recovery are sitting on the same aging inventory at day 150 that they had at day 90.

The framing of this as a pricing problem is the thing I want to push back on because I think it leads to the wrong response. We had a similar situation on a slow-moving ICE model two years ago and the instinct was to discount. What actually moved inventory was changing the conversation entirely away from price. We created a package that bundled charging installation, a home energy audit, and a two-year maintenance plan into the vehicle price and stopped negotiating on the vehicle itself. The total cost came down but the transaction price held. The customers who responded were the ones who had been intellectually interested in an EV but uncertain about the ownership experience. Giving them certainty on the things they were actually worried about moved more units than another $1,500 off sticker. The price fighters on the lot are going to run out of margin before they run out of inventory.

I want to offer what the factory side of this conversation actually looks like because I do not think dealers are getting a straight answer from their reps. The allocation push is not coming from anyone who is unaware of the inventory situation at the dealer level. We see the days supply data in real time. The push is coming from plants that are running on production commitments made before the demand picture changed and stopping the line costs more in the near term than pushing units into dealer inventory does. Your rep knows your lot is full. They are choosing between a bad option for you and a worse option for their plant scorecard. The dealers who have gotten relief are the ones who documented the carrying cost impact in writing and escalated above the field rep level to zone operations. One conversation with a rep changes nothing. Documented escalation sometimes does.

Reply 2 and 6 are spot on. It feels like the factories are just dumping their production headaches onto our lots to protect their own numbers. Until they align allocation with actual demand or fix those lease residuals, we’re just burning margin to cover their carrying costs.

120 day units are a F&I problem as much as a sales problem. By the time a customer gets in front of me on an aged EV the conversation is already poisoned. They have seen the price drops online, they know the unit has been sitting, and their first question is why nobody else wanted it. Floorplan on a $45 to $55k EV is not cheap and every month it sits it gets harder to structure a deal that works for both sides. What we have had some luck with is targeting commercial accounts and fleet adjacent buyers who care less about the depreciation narrative and more about total cost of operation. Also found that pairing a maintenance bundle into the deal helps justify a cleaner price. But I will be straight with you: factory allocating more into an oversupplied segment right now is indefensible.

There may actually be a floor forming but it is not coming from demand recovery, it is coming from attrition. A lot of the independent EV-heavy stores in our market are just quietly stopping their orders and that is tightening regional supply without anyone announcing it. The units that remain are starting to carry real finance incentives from a few brands, and those can move metal when stacked with a lease. The better question is whether your factory rep has any flexibility on turn-in requirements for aged units. Some brands are quietly offering support they won't put in writing if you push. Worth a conversation before you discount to the floor on your own.

Reply 2 and 6 hit the nail on the head. The disconnect between factory production and actual dealer sell-through is brutal right now. We can’t keep burning margin to solve the OEM’s overproduction problems. It’s time for some serious pushback on those allocation numbers before the floorplan costs eat us alive.

We actually moved four aged EVs in the last six weeks by doing something the OEM would probably not officially endorse. We stopped talking about the vehicle and started talking about the total cost of ownership over 36 months against what the customer was currently paying in gas and maintenance. No EV pitch, no range talk, just math on a whiteboard. Two of those customers had never seriously considered an EV before that conversation. The problem is most sales staff are not trained to run that conversation because the OEM training materials are still built around feature walkthroughs. The product is not the barrier right now for a certain buyer segment. The sales process is.

It really feels like a game of chicken between dealers and the factory right now. If we don’t start documenting the carrying costs like Reply 6 suggests, the OEMs will just keep using our lots as overflow parking. We can't keep burning margin to fix their production math.

We stopped fighting the price compression and started working the fleet and commercial angle instead. Local businesses, government contracts, anything where the buyer has a use case that justifies the EV math without relying on the tax credit. It is not a volume solution but it moves aged units at a number that does not crater your comp values. The other thing that has actually worked is pairing the EV conversation with a used vehicle trade at peak value while trade values are still elevated. You are solving two problems at once and the customer leaves feeling like they got something. Factory allocation pressure is real and I do not think there is a clean answer there until OEMs start managing it differently.

The factory-dealer disconnect is brutal right now. Reply 6 hits home—they’re protecting their plant scores while we drown in floorplan interest. Shifting the conversation to TCO and commercial buyers seems like the only way to survive this without completely torching our margins. It’s a total game of chicken.