Haha, you are so right. The amount of support for hybrids and public transit on this sub has never been so high. It’s hilarious.

I don’t have experience with super-car tiers, but I have experience with several “luxury” cars from higher-end brands over the years (BMW, Infiniti, Acura), as well as cars from some mainstream brands such as Toyota, Nissan, Volvo, and Honda. Most recently, my experience has been with Tesla.

Because Tesla provides at-home service—they even delivered my first Tesla to my driveway—I find it to be uniquely superior to the alternatives. When I have had to take a car to the service center, I have found the overall experience significantly better than a traditional dealership:

• I schedule an appointment in a few moments via the app, not having to call up and navigate a phone tree. Just write up the issue and take photos if that helps.
• When dropping the car off for the service appointment, I just park anywhere on the service center’s lot and click “I’ve dropped the car off” in the app. Again, no need to fuss with a waiting room or interact with anyone if I don’t want to.
• During the service appointment, a loaner car is added to my app’s vehicle list and adopts my driving preferences seamlessly. I get in, and it configures itself to my tastes.
• When I return the loaner car, again I just park it anywhere on their lot and click “Returned loaner car.” No need to go into the service center at all.
• I walk over to my own car and it unlocks automatically and I drive away. If there is a payment (so far, I’ve only paid for a seasonal tire swap), that can also be done right in the app via Apple Pay.

The whole experience feels tuned to (a) minimize the amount of time wasted managing the service appointment, allowing you to get back to work or whatever you are doing that day and (b) minimize the need to deal with staff, though I have walked in and talked with the staff, and they all seem friendly and knowledgeable.

The luxury of never waiting in a depressing auto dealership waiting room is so worth it.

It’s also interesting that because they only work on electric cars, the workshop is incredibly clean and the service rep kiosk is partially on the workshop floor. It’s quiet and clean, oddly like a modern concrete-floored office building, but with cars being worked on. The tires squeaking on polished concrete is the most notable noise.

“Our strong ICE business that frankly has gotten stronger, and we still believe there’s growth there,” Barra said.

This is all you really need to know about GM.

Plus, are there really any Fiat dealers left in the United States? My understanding was that Fiat is a ghost of a company here.

Oh, I agree. But I can see and appreciate the counter-argument that focusing on their existing profit center (ICE vehicles) can be a short-term win. Many in this thread are excusing their behavior precisely for this reason.

In my opinion, it will most definitely endanger the company in the long-term. And if I weren’t already strongly opposed to Stellantis, this would turn me sour to the company. But so many companies fail to plan for the long-term; pathological short-term focus is hardly exceptional.

We wanted to buy an EV but wanted to see how they fair on road trips in the midwest.

You rented one of the worst road-tripping EVs made; don’t allow that to turn you off from EVs in general. The EQB 300 is a low-efficiency first-generation EV from a company that is only recently getting into EV production. And it uses a charging network renowned for its poor reliability. And the icing on the cake is doing 0-to-100% charging, which is hurting your overall driving time tremendously. But I am sure the on-board route planner wasn’t really helping matters since Mercedes’ software is so poor.

I’d gladly pay a lot more for anything that’s not from Stellantis.

Not only is the company only a fair-weather EV manufacturer, but they’re also responsible for some of the worst vehicles on the road today. The 500e may be right for some people, and I don’t hold it against anyone who likes the 500e. But for me, it’s a hard pass.

I can understand the business reasons for such a decision. It’s the usual “maximize shareholder value” short-term thinking stuff.

But for any thoughtful consumer, this has to utterly wreck the possibility of ever buying a Stellantis product in the future.