Hyundai’s recent announcement that buyers will be able to purchase their vehicles through Amazon starting in 2024 was surprising but welcome. The dealer experience has seemed to get worse in the last few years and buying a car online might help matters. Just don’t expect pricing to get any better as Hyundai indirectly confirmed to Carscoops.
The confirmation came in about the most roundabout way possible. Apparently, someone eager to buy their Hyundai off Amazon tweeted on X about trying to purchase an Ioniq 6 they had configured. Once they gave the configuration they wanted to their local Hyundai dealer, they were hit with a $3,000 markup. They then ask “Explain to me the innovation here?” seemingly asking why Hyundai is bragging about this whole Amazon thing. I’ll explain it to you sir: you were using the wrong Hyundai/Amazon product.
The Twitter user was on Hyundai’s existing Amazon digital showroom platform called Hyundai Evolve Showroom. It currently allows you to browse and configure Hyundai vehicles in a digital showroom. Once you configure the vehicle you want, you can search local inventory, see pricing, estimate payments and contact a local dealer from there. You can’t buy a car though.
In a statement, Hyundai confirmed this to Carscoops when they showed them what the customer posted in their tweet.
The screenshots in that posting on X appear to be from the current digital showroom experience which links customers to dealer websites. This is different than the new customer sales experience we announced with Amazon last week at the LA Show.
The second part of the statement though pretty much says Hyundai won’t be able to do much about markups, essentially because automakers’ hands are more or less tied when it comes to telling dealers what they can and can’t charge. “It’s worth noting that even with this new program dealers will remain the sellers of record and they will also set the pricing for their vehicles,” the spokesperson added.
So what does this mean exactly? Even though you’ll have the convenience of being able to buy a car online from the comfort of your own home, dealers will still have the final say on pricing, which means you still might get hit with a markup. Hyundai has the right idea by partnering with Amazon; car buying has to change. The reality though is that dealers still have the power to fight that change.
Dealers will find a way to ruin car buying through Amazon. Pricing will either be misleading, dealers will work with the platform up until a certain point and then still try to get buyers to come in, or some dealers might not participate in Amazon car buying at all.