Best Buy wants to become your local electric-car dealer

The biggest pain of any entrepreneur that owns a start-up is to get a bunch of people to check out or buy his/her new product or service. Being an electric-car startup could be even more of a pain in the butt since you either have to launch your own dealer network or manage to get existing dealers to sell your product in their showroom.

But what if there was an instant dealer network of 1,000 plus stores nationwide that was ready to not only sell your electric-car but train buyers on everything there is to know about it? Sounds pretty good huh? Best Buy is hoping to become that network.

The Minneapolis-based retail chain, has been already involved in the electrifying of transportation and has won contracts to install home chargers for the Ford Focus Electric and Mitsubishi i. The company will begin those installations this year.

Senior director Chad Bell says Best Buy is also talking to automakers about selling EVs.

“We are having conversations with some of the startups,” Bell says. “I would say the conversations are going well. We are very excited about several partnerships that we can’t talk about yet.” Best Buy has 1,101 U.S. stores. And, Bell notes, “We probably get more traffic in a weekend than some of these dealers do in a month.” The benefits for a small automaker trying to cobble together a sales and service network are obvious.

Bell said that Best Buy is also talking with traditional automakers to sell their EVs as well.

– By: Omar Rana

Source: Automotive News