Reports are that Cadillac dealers are discussing options other than an EV future.

News outlets today have widely been re-reporting that Cadillac dealers are in discussions with General Motors over whether or not to be a part of the company’s “all-electric future.” Automotive News’ headline is “EV-Wary Dealers Offered Upward of $500,000 to drop Cadillac.”

“We wanted to move fast and make sure dealers are ready for the acceleration,” Mahmoud Samara, vice president of Cadillac North America, told trade publication Automotive News. “This is purely an option for those dealers who feel the EV journey is not suitable for them.”*

reuss ev electric future now GM image from H factory event
General Motors President Mark Reuss announces Monday, January 27, 2020, a $2.2 billion investment at its Detroit- Hamtramck (MI) assembly plant to produce a variety of all-electric trucks and SUVs. GM’s first all-electric truck will be a pickup with production scheduled to begin in late 2021. The Cruise Origin, a shared, electric, self-driving vehicle unveiled by Cruise in San Francisco last week will soon follow. Detroit-Hamtramck will be GM’s first fully-dedicated electric vehicle assembly plant. (Photo by Steve Fecht for General Motors)

Given the entire industry’s move to electrified vehicles, this writer’s take is that the dealers for whom a buyout sounds attractive are not confident in Cadillac’s future electric or not. Tesla is now outselling Cadillac by about three to one. In fact, Tesla is now outselling all of Cadillac each month with just one of its hot models. If that isn’t evidence enough that a switch to EVs is needed to keep Cadillac a viable brand, what would be?

“Enough money is being offered” in buyout incentives “that it is clearly getting the attention of a lot of the smaller dealers,” Shawn Mercer, a Tallahassee, Florida attorney who represents a number of dealers in that region, told Automotive News.* “They’re looking at this as a godsend, almost,” said Stuart McCallum, an automotive consultant from Princeton, New Jersey.*

Cadillac dealers are not alone in working through a transition to an electric vehicle future. EE News reported in February that the head of Volkswagen Group of America Inc. recently stood before his dealers and told them he would cover half the costs of getting their facilities ready for electric cars, such as building charging stations. The same report says that Honda America has already assisted 450 dealers with the cost to transition to selling EVs.

*Quotations and more content on this subject are available at The Detroit Bureau.