What Does the Dealership of 2035 Look Like?

It's Saturday morning in 2035, and you've decided to buy a car. What actually happens?

Initially, it seems like an easy question. You're greeted by a friendly, autonomous, AI driven machine instead of a receptionist. All the paperwork is digital. Traditional vehicles sit alongside electric and autonomous ones. Perhaps it's closer to a kiosk than a dealership.

It's a relatively easy task to imagine what that Saturday morning will look like until you stop and ask yourself, Who is selling the car?

Can we simply assume the dealership of tomorrow looks much like the dealership of today, only with more sophisticated technology? We assume the building survives, we assume the individual dealership survives, and only the tools change.

But can we actually make that assumption?

Manufacturers like Ford have been signaling a desire for greater control over the retail transaction for many years. Some have openly discussed both direct-to-consumer and an "agency" styled fixed pricing model. If that direction ultimately prevails, then we've already made our first incorrect assumption about the dealership of 2035.

We're imagining a retail dealership model that may no longer exist, so perhaps we should answer this question first.

Who sells the car in 2035?

Suppose the answer is the dealership. That's good. Now we can continue.

Or can we?

Who owns the inventory?

If the manufacturer owns every vehicle until delivery, like in an agency or European model, is the dealership still an independent retailer, or has it become something else?

If the dealership owns the inventory, then perhaps today's competitive retail model survives, and we can begin imagining today's dealership but with tomorrow's technology.

What if it doesn't?

Now, everything begins to change.

Not just for this thought experiment but for how Americans will purchase their new vehicles ten years from today. Every attempt we made to imagine it required us to first answer a much more fundamental and important question. Not a question of technology, software, or the finance office of the future, but whether the retail model we've known for the last century survives at all.