Ford Is Trying To Stop People From Reselling F-150 Lightnings
Ford wants people to sign a 1-year no-sale clause to prevent them from flipping their new F-150 Lightning for a profit.
Ford
appears to be setting the stage for a potential ban on immediate resales for its highly popular F-150 Lightning
electric pickup truck.As
Kelley Blue Book
reports, the automaker is allowing its dealerships to insert a no-sale provision for customers to sign at the time of purchase.Ford said the move is in response to an inquiry from dealerships requesting the ability to make customers hold on to their new F-150 Lightning for one year from the purchase date.
Jerry
looks into what’s the automaker’s intent on giving resellers the shaft?Resellers are nobody's friend
Resellers can be the bane of a shopper's existence—especially if they're capitalizing on high demand for a scarce product.
For instance, when Sony and Microsoft released their latest Xbox and Playstation consoles, resellers used a variety of means to make sure they were the first to be notified of and purchase these highly sought-after consoles when they were in stock.
They then sold them for a huge markup—in many cases, hundreds of dollars about MSRP.
What does this have to do with EVs, especially the F-150 Lightning?
Not just limited to video game consoles and brand-name shoes, resellers are also notorious for buying electric vehicles like the F-150 Lightning and then selling them for a high mark-up to take advantage of that scarcity.
New vehicles are already notoriously difficult to find, given the litany of issues affecting dealership inventory. Dealerships also happen to set the prices for the vehicles they sell, not the automakers—really emphasizing the "suggested" in Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Price.
EVs are even more scarce, with battery supply issues affecting inventory and several new models having already sold out for the next model year.
What Ford is doing, though, is essentially laying the groundwork for dealerships to prevent customers from immediately flipping their new vehicle for a massive profit.
Are dealers totally on board with the F-150 Lightning ban?
As KBB reports, automakers and their dealer networks have clashed somewhat recently over the insane
mark-ups
that dealerships have placed on their vehicles. Dealers themselves seem eager to capitalize on demand through these higher markups, which they might assert would prevent resellers from swooping in and snatching new vehicles at MSRP to be sold at a higher resale price.
If it sounds a little self-serving, it is. Dealerships see these resellers making bank on these new vehicles and simply want a piece of the action.
Ford CEO Jim Farley previously warned dealers to stop marking up its
most popular vehicles
or risk losing the right to sell them. This resale clause touted by the Blue Oval could help ease some of the concerns of dealerships—mainly that if they sell these popular new vehicles at MSRP, they don't have to risk resellers getting in on the action until a year after it's sold.
Is it enforceable?
Ford has enforced something similar before with its Ford GT supercar. As Car and Driver reports, professional wrestler and actor John Cena purchased a Ford GT in 2017 before selling it a few months later.
This violated the resale agreement he signed when purchasing the vehicle. Ford filed suit, and Cena and Ford settled for an unspecified amount of money in 2018.
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