Scott EmpringhamAI Marketing Strategist | Helping CEOs Scale with AI

Tesla Exposed a Broken System #tesla #ford #automotiveindustry #automotivemarketing #dealershiplife

1 Jun 2026 · 1 min

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1:24

In this commentary, a seasoned automotive sales and marketing professional—now running an investment fund that acquires dealerships—examines the inefficiencies of traditional dealer negotiations and advocates for a seamless, one-price online buying experience. He highlights Tesla’s direct-sales model as a proof point that online price negotiation without a dealer can work, but notes that Tesla still lacks many aspects of the customer experience that dealerships traditionally provide, such as trade‑in valuation, financing, and F&I product integration. The speaker reflects on his attempts to digitize dealership processes, achieving partial success, and suggests that while Tesla’s model demonstrates the viability of a single-price system, future growth may still require a dealer network to fill those service gaps.

Chapters

Does Tesla lack a lot of stuff in their customer experience that dealers would be helpful? A lot. I handled sales and marketing, so, you know, and, and always prided myself on understanding the dealer business. Like, right to this day, well, that's what I do now is the investment fund. We buy, we buy dealerships, and I always felt like the negotiation process of a customer walking into a dealership was wasted energy. Customer wants to go online, see the price, send the lead, walk in, and that price that they saw online is the price when they get in. Just value or trade, arrange financing, F&I products, and get 'em out the door. You know, it's one of the only— homes and cars are one of the only things you still negotiate. And digital technology was enabling a lot closer to a seamless one-price type of experience. I made a number of futile attempts to implement it on a wide scale and some success, but not— and we improved the process. I think we didn't get to where I wanted, but I think we improved the process. To me, Tesla was an example how one price works. I mean, you negotiate the price online, there's no dealers. Now, does Tesla lack a lot of stuff in the customer experience that dealers would be helpful? A lot. Okay. And I believe companies like that eventually are going to have a dealer body, but I think it proved that scale, that one price kind of works.