Amazon.com now also sells cars

Amazon.com is now offering new Hyundai vehicles in selected cities in the USA. This makes the Korean car manufacturer Amazon Autos' first partner. Amazon announced in November last year that it would be entering the car sales market. However, it was to take over a year before the beta version of Amazon Autos went online on Tuesday. Further car brands are not due to be added until next year.

And for now, it is only one car brand with ten models in selected US cities. Even there, not all ten models are available. For example, in the first attempt heise onelines with an address in the Seattle area, no Hyundai Elantra was available, but other Hyundai models were. Amazon's corporate headquarters are in Seattle. We found the entire range in New York City.

The slow introduction is probably due to a special feature of the North American car market: In most US states, car manufacturers are prohibited from selling cars. Sales must be handled by independent car dealers who are also licensed as such and meet various requirements. The details vary from state to state, sometimes these are direct bans, sometimes it is a ban on competing with car dealers, sometimes there are exceptions for Tesla or for exotic manufacturers with tiny sales figures, but basically car dealers are heavily protected.

Slow introduction

Since Amazon.com, as far as is known, does not intend to set up a dealer network with garages, and Hyundai cannot sell directly, Amazon only arranges contracts with car dealers in the respective region. The range of available vehicles varies accordingly. And setting up the processes required to broker the sale obviously took some time, probably prolonged by a ransomware attack on the software provider CDK Global in early summer.

CDK specializes in car dealerships; 15,000 of them were suddenly unable to sell cars. According to media reports, CDK paid the criminals a ransom of 387 Bitcoin in June. That was around 25 million US dollars at the time; today it would be half as much. Without official authorization, such a ransom payment would be illegal.

Loans, insurance, extended warranties

Amazon Autos displays the respective dealer for each car. Unsurprisingly, Amazon is also looking to make money by brokering car insurance, extended warranties, loss of value insurance and maintenance contracts.

When we called up 'Amazon Autos', the prices called up were slightly below the list prices. In addition, Amazon is enticing customers with an introductory offer of 2300 dollars in Amazon vouchers. Basically, the site emphasizes buying cars on credit, but not currently leasing. Depending on creditworthiness, interest rates range from 5.88 to 18 percent p.a. Legally speaking, Amazon only offers an application for a loan. Only once you have decided on a car and added it to your shopping cart does Amazon also show the option of purchasing the car without financing. If this option is selected, Amazon collects a down payment of 500 US dollars, the rest must then be paid to the car dealer.

When placing an order, customers can also offer a used car for trade-in on the website. To achieve this, they have to answer around 20 questions and either reject or accept the trade-in credit offered, and then hand in the old car within a week. Negotiating is expressly not possible. Anyone who feels they have been short-changed must contact the dealer directly.

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