Few people love car dealerships. They’re stressful and sprawling, and it’s hard to shake the feeling that someone is getting a raw deal. But as the auto industry increasingly goes electric and moves online, companies like Honda are rethinking every aspect of the purchase process—including the spaces in which it happens.
Honda announced today that it’s rolling out a new dealership design, one that takes up less square footage and is modular and flexible; what was once showroom space, for example, can be transformed into offices for employees. It’ll also have electric vehicle chargers, as the company aims to sell half a million EVs in the US by 2030. “Our dealers are looking at ways to modernize and digitalize their business,” Mamadou Diallo, the vice president of auto sales at American Honda, told reporters last week. Recent experiences, he says, have taught the automaker…
