In the August issue of Consumer Reports, starting on page 49, is a two-page article titled "Cars", "Plug-in reality check". It questions if electric-car (and I think the same would apply to electric motorcycles) customers are getting the right information from dealers. According to the article, there have been a number of reports from their readers about salesmen discouraging customers from buying electric or plug-in vehicles and steering them toward ICE-powered vehicles instead, as well as providing goofy (uninformed) information regarding electric vehicles. In some cases, customers will even ask to see electric cars but will be told that none are in stock or otherwise not available, even though they were available in the dealer's inventory.
To check these stories, Consumer Reports sent 20 secret shoppers to 85 dealerships in California, Maryland, New York and Oregon, between December 2013 and March 2014, to determine how well sales people were doing at promoting EV's and if they were giving customers accurate information. In general, they substantiated many of their readers' reports. Some dealers would not admit to having an electric vehicle in stock (even though they did) and some sales people would provide incorrect information, such as that the batteries in a plug-in Prius would require replacement every couple of years. Another dealer said that the Focus EV could not be leased. All sorts of other incorrect information was provided at various dealerships, with Honda and Toyota dealers being the worse.
The Consumer Reports article ends with a side-bar recommending when to buy electric or gas and then answers six general questions regarding electric cars.
While cars are not motorcycles, my guess is that the situation is a lot worse at many of the relatively few motorcycle shops that sell electric motorcycles, such as Brammos and Zeros.
