- Buick has made it clear that its future lies in two directions. First, the brand will only sell EVs after 2030. Second, all Buicks will be SUVs.
- Dealers who aren’t aligned with that future will be given an off-ramp, Buick global vice president Duncan Aldred said this week.
- The first all-electric Buick, the Electra, should be revealed sometime in 2023 and will arrive in 2024 as a 2025 model. Its look is expected to be influenced by the Buick Wildcat concept shown above.
General Motors continues its push toward electrification, and it might take out a few Buick dealerships on its way.
Duncan Aldred, global vice president of Buick and GMC, revealed to the Wall Street Journal this week that all of the 1900-plus Buick dealerships in the U.S. will be given buyout offers to those who don't want to be a part of the brand's shift to selling only electric vehicles. Buick is requiring its dealers to invest in charging stations and other store upgrades as part of this change.
"Not everyone necessarily wants to make [the electric] journey, depending on where they're located or the level of expenditure that the transition will demand," Aldred told the Journal. "So if they want to exit the Buick franchise, then we will give them monetary assistance to do so." A Buick spokesperson told Car and Driver that there are "approximately 2000" U.S. Buick dealers but declined to speculate on how many are expected to take the buyout offer.
While Buick isn't yet selling any all-electric models, the first Buick EV . The second and third and, well, all the rest will, too. Buick has announced that all of its EVs will carry the Electra name. The first Buick Electra should go into production in 2024 as a 2025 model. All new Buicks sold in the U.S. and Canada after that date will not only be electric, but the brand will exclusively sell SUVs in the future.
We don’t know many details about the first Buick Electra, but since we expect it will use a GM Ultium battery pack with about 100.0 kWh of capacity, that should be good for 300 or more miles of range. The Electra will be revealed sometime in 2023, and we expect it will start at around $50,000.
Most of the Buick dealers in the U.S. also sell GMC models. According to Automotive News, there were only around a dozen stand-alone Buick dealerships, so taking a buyout would most likely keep the dealership in the GM family.
In 2020, GM offered buyouts to Cadillac dealers that didn’t want to spend the $150,000 to $200,000 that GM was requiring to update the dealerships for Cadillac's first EV, the Lyriq, which is due next year. Around 175 Cadillac dealers took the buyouts, which were worth between $300,000 and $500,000, according to Automotive News.
Sebastian Blanco has been writing about electric vehicles, hybrids, and hydrogen cars since 2006. His articles and car reviews have appeared in the New York Times, Automotive News, Reuters, SAE, Autoblog, InsideEVs, Trucks.com, Car Talk, and other outlets. His first green-car media event was the launch of the Tesla Roadster, and since then he has been tracking the shift away from gasoline-powered vehicles and discovering the new technology's importance not just for the auto industry, but for the world as a whole. Throw in the recent shift to autonomous vehicles, and there are more interesting changes happening now than most people can wrap their heads around. You can find him on Twitter or, on good days, behind the wheel of a new EV.
