CATA News

By Mike Stanton, NADA president and CEO

 

In the coming years, we will see a phenomenal uptick in the number and type of battery-electric cars and trucks that are purpose-built for a multitude of American car buyers, and widely available for sale across the country.

With all of the buzz about EVs — including pledges from just about every automaker to transition their fleets to electric as quickly as possible — you’d be forgiven for thinking that day has already arrived. It hasn’t. Not yet.

Make no mistake: We are well on our way to a much more electrified transportation future, and that is a great thing. But while EV sales have grown considerably just within the last year, they still make up a very small percentage of overall new-vehicle sales.

Consumers continue to opt for ICE vehicles with little hesitation, and there are good reasons for that. Still, far too little of our analysis of low EV sales focuses on the product side of the equation — or the historic lack thereof, in this case.

Consider this: At the end of 2020, automakers collectively offered 206 different makes and models of gas-powered cars and trucks for sale in the U.S. The number of models of battery-electric vehicles available for sale at the end of 2020? Eleven.

It gets worse the more you break it down. Full-size pickups made up 10% of new-car sales in 2020. The number of ICE models available in that segment was six, compared to zero powered by batteries.

Midsize/large cars accounted for 12% of 2020 new-vehicle sales. There were 20 different ICE-powered midsize/large car models available, versus — again — zero powered by electricity.

Compact and midsize SUVs made up by far the largest share of vehicle sales in 2020: a combined 35%. Consumers had the choice of 18 models of compact SUVs and 21 models of midsize SUVs with internal-combustion engines — and a grand total of two models of BEVs between these two segments.

Simply put, one of the big reasons consumers aren’t yet scooping up EVs in bigger numbers is because, up to now, we haven’t given them very much product to choose from.

That is changing, and changing very rapidly. But as we gear up for the influx of new EVs, we run the risk of making another faulty assumption — this time, about what it will take to get mass-market car buyers to feel comfortable and confident about buying their first EV.

There’s a sentiment out there that because Tesla, the most successful EV automaker, has chosen to utilize direct sales instead of a franchised dealer model, that we must employ the direct sales model if want to convert more and more Americans to electric drivetrains. After all, the vast majority of EVs on the road today are Teslas, so it stands to reason that future EV buyers will need to be offered the Tesla experience in order to lure them away from ICE.

The problem is, nobody bothered to ask those future EV buyers what type of sales and service experience they wanted to have. That is, until Escalent asked.

Escalent is a renowned human behavior and analytics advisory firm with deep ties to the U.S. auto industry. Recently, Escalent completed a landmark research project called EVForward, the largest and most comprehensive study ever conducted of future EV buyers.

More than 20,000 legitimate EV intenders and early EV adopters were asked to provide detailed feedback on how they wanted to learn about and experience EVs, how they wanted to purchase EVs, how they wanted to have those EVs serviced, and what kind of vehicles and features they need to see in order to make the switch to electric.

What Escalent found was astounding. As it turns out, the assumption that future EV buyers want the Tesla direct-sales model is just flat wrong.

 

Escalent presented these future EV buyers with a de-branded version of the Tesla sales model and had them respond to it. Only 20% preferred the Tesla approach. 23% were neutral. And a full 57% chose the current dealership model.

To take this one step further, when Escalent identified current Tesla owners and asked them what they preferred, only 54% of Tesla owners chose the Tesla approach to selling vehicles.

"The vast majority of future EV consumers are not looking for any dramatic change in the way things are done," said Mike Dovorany, Escalent’s vice president of automotive and mobility, and the project lead of EVForward. "Yes, there are certain elements of Tesla’s approach that consumers really like. But on the whole, it’s far from the definitive way that even Tesla owners want to see things happen going forward."

 

Consumers indicated quite strong preferences for doing many functions of an EV purchase — including test driving, becoming educated on the vehicle and charging options, completing the transaction, and getting the vehicle serviced — in person.

In a very real way, Escalent revealed that one of the reasons Tesla’s experiment with selling direct worked was only because the company just never gave their customers any other choice. And, of course, Tesla enjoys a brand attraction and customer base that is on a different plane than most other automakers.

But now that someone has taken the time to ask consumers what they actually want, it’s quite clear that the direct sales model is not the right approach. And when 20,000 future EV buyers are saying that they very much want — in fact, demand — for dealerships be a big part of their EV purchase experience, OEMs should embrace their franchised dealer network as the competitive advantage it is.

"What our research showed us is that there are more ways for the legacy OEMs and dealers to work together on EVs than there are areas where they may conflict," Dovorany said. "If EV adoption is a goal for the manufacturer, there is really strong evidence here that working with your dealer body is going to be a great way to help actually get those vehicles sold."

We couldn’t agree more, and we hope that our OEM partners always remember this as they continue to roll some really exciting and important EV products off the assembly line.

 

New light-vehicle sales in October saw their first month-to-month gain since April. The October 2021 SAAR totaled 13 million units, down 20.8% from October 2020 but up 6.3% from one month earlier. 

October sales began with the lowest inventory levels on record, at 972,000 units, and the low inventory continues to keep sales rates below current market demand. October’s month-end inventory levels did not show significant change from September. In this tight market, OEMs continue to prioritize retail deliveries over fleet deliveries. According to J.D. Power, fleet sales accounted for just 13% of new-vehicle sales in October.

Light-truck market share last month topped 80% for the first time, representing 80.2% of all new light vehicles sold. Through the first 10 months of the year, light trucks have accounted for 77.2% of new-vehicle sales. After setting a record in September 2021, average new light-vehicle transaction prices set a new record of just under $44,000, said J.D. Power. Prices have risen due to limited new-vehicle supplies and reduced OEM incentive spending. 

Accordingly, average incentive spending per unit also hit a new record low of $1,628. Consumers facing these rising prices have benefited from very strong trade-in values. J.D. Power estimates that the average trade-in value is up 70% year over year.   

For the rest of 2021, dealers are expected to continue to sell most of their inventory soon after it reaches their lots as they work their way through their customer order books. Therefore, little change to overall inventory levels is expected before year-end. Inventory levels should begin to slowly and steadily increase throughout 2022, but likely will remain below pre-COVID levels. Forecasters expect new light-vehicle sales in 2021 to total about 15.2 million units.

 

The Federal Trade Commission has issued its long-awaited, final amendments to the FTC Safeguards Rule. The amended Rule, adopted by a 3-2 vote along party lines, contains a significant number of new and expanded procedural, technical, and personnel requirements that financial institutions, including dealers, must satisfy to meet their information security obligations. 

 

The new requirements include:

 

(a) developing and implementing specific components of an information security program, such as access controls, authentication, and encryption; and

(b) requiring actions related to the program’s accountability, such as hiring or retaining "qualified" personnel and conducting periodic reports to the financial institution’s governing body.

Since the amendments were proposed, The National Automobile Dealers Association’s regulatory affairs division presented to the FTC two sets of extensive written comments that challenged the need for and the practicality of many of proposed amendments and urged the FTC to conduct a cost-benefit analysis on each of them. The NADA’s comments included an independent, third-party cost study. 

Although the FTC made significant changes and provided important clarifications to the proposed amended rule in response to the NADA’s input, many of the amendments will require dealers to adopt new information security measures. While several of the new obligations may already be in place at many dealerships, others vastly expand what most dealers have developed and will require additional investments in software, technology, and potentially dealership personnel. The challenges involved in the satisfying the new obligations also could increase dealers’ liability exposure. 

Dealers, as well as their relevant technology vendors, must comply with the new requirements of the Rule within one year of its Nov. 5 publication in the Federal Register. Several of the new requirements do not apply to financial institutions that maintain customer information on fewer than 5,000 consumers.

The NADA is developing compliance guidance, and dealers are encouraged to reach out to their technology vendors as soon as is feasible to ensure they are taking the necessary steps to comply with the new requirements.

 

The White House on Nov. 8 said businesses should move forward with President Joe Biden’s vaccine and testing requirements for private businesses, despite a federal appeals court ordering a temporary halt to the rules.

 

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, considered one of the most conservative appellate courts in the country, halted the requirements Nov. 6 pending review, writing that "the petitions give cause to believe there are grave statutory and constitutional issues with the Mandate."

The Republican attorneys general in five states, as well as several companies, requested the pause. They argued that the requirements exceed the authority of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which will enforce the mandates, and amount to an unconstitutional delegation of power to the executive branch by Congress.

In its Nov. 8 response, the Biden administration asked the court to lift the pause, dismissing the states’ and companies’ claims of harm as "premature" given that the deadlines for vaccination and testing are not until January. The administration claimed that pausing the requirements "would likely cost dozens or even hundreds of lives per day" as the virus spreads. The Labor and Justice Departments also argued that OSHA acted within its authority as established by Congress.

The court-ordered pause came a day after the requirements went into effect, starting the countdown for businesses with 100 or more employees to ensure their staff have received the shots required for full vaccination by Jan. 4. After that date, unvaccinated workers must submit a negative Covid-19 test weekly to enter the workplace. All unvaccinated workers must start wearing face masks indoors at their workplaces starting Dec. 5.

The ETS requires:

• establishing, implementing and enforcing a written Mandatory Vaccination Policy with an exception for employers that instead establish, implement, and enforce a policy allowing employees who are not fully vaccinated to elect to undergo weekly COVID-19 testing and wear a face covering at the workplace (OSHA has provided sample Mandatory Vaccination Policy and a sample Vaccination or Testing and Face Covering Policy; and

• determining the vaccination status of each covered employee;

• keeping vaccination records for all fully vaccinated covered employees;

• providing paid time off for covered employees to get vaccinated and/or to recover from vaccination side effects;

• requiring COVID-19 test results from unvaccinated covered employees every seven days. (There are exceptions to this requirement based on when covered employees report to a workplace. Dealer employers need not pay for required COVID-19 testing.);

• taking specific actions when an employee tests positive for COVID-19;

• requiring unvaccinated covered employees to wear face masks generally while indoors or in vehicles with other persons; and

• allowing most covered employees to voluntarily wear face masks.

 

OSHA has issued FAQs on the rule. Among other things, the FAQs clarify that:

• For purposes of the 100-employee threshold, a single corporate entity with multiple locations must count all employees at those locations. For example, a dealership group with five stores with a total of at least 100 employees must comply with the ETS even if some of those dealerships have fewer than 100 employees. With regard to the issue of whether affiliated companies under common control (for example, a chain of dealerships owned by a single parent corporation) must be treated as one employer, the ETS notice states: [T]wo or more related entities may be regarded as a single employer … if they handle safety matters as one company, in which case the employees of all entities making up the integrated single employer must be counted.

• Part-time, off-site and remote employees count toward the 100-employee threshold.

Attorneys general in at least 26 states have challenged Biden’s vaccine and testing requirements in five different U.S. appeals courts since Nov. 5. The Republican National Committee said it has also challenged the requirements in the D.C. Court of Appeals.

 

It’s unclear which court will ultimately decide the case. When multiple petitions are filed in at least two courts, the cases are consolidated in one of those courts through a lottery system. The Justice Department said in a Nov. 8 filing that the lottery is expected take place on or around Nov. 16. The Biden administration said the courts should not rule until the jurisdiction for the consolidated case has been selected.

 

David Vladeck, a professor of law at Georgetown University, said there’s a "high probability" that the case will end up before the Supreme Court.

 

OSHA, which polices workplace safety for the Labor Department, developed the vaccine and testing requirements under emergency authority established by Congress. That authority allows the agency to shortcut the process to issue workplace safety standards, which normally takes years. 

 

The Labor Department’s top lawyer, Seema Nanda, said Nov. 5 that the Biden administration is "fully prepared to defend this standard in court." 

 

Nanda said the law "explicitly gives OSHA the authority to act quickly in an emergency where the agency finds that workers are subjected to a grave danger and a new standard is necessary to protect them."

 

Nanda also said the vaccine and testing requirements supersede "any state or local requirements that ban or limit an employer’s authority to require vaccination, face-covering, or testing." Texas Gov. Greg Abbott issued an executive order last month banning vaccine mandates in the Lone Star State.

 

OSHA emergency workplace safety standards have a mixed track record in court. Prior to the vaccine requirements, the agency had issued 10 such standards in its 50-year history. Courts halted or overturned four of those standards, and a fifth was partially vacated.

 

More than 750,000 people have died in the U.S. from Covid since the pandemic began, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More than 1,100 people a day die from Covid, and more than 71,000 people a day are newly infected, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

 

"If that’s not a grave danger, I don’t know what else is," Nanda said.

 

Kunes Ford of Antioch was named one of the 100 "Best Dealerships to Work For" in Automotive News’s 2021 polling. Winning dealerships were ranked based on employee surveys and information from management.

 

Assurance, Inc., the parent company of CATA member American Financial & Automotive Services, won seven 2021 Dealers’ Choice Awards, including three "diamond" status awards, the top prize in the award’s 35 categories. The award recognizes auto dealers’ favorite vendors, suppliers, and finance partners.

 

In the 1970s, Chrysler’s TV commercials played up its vehicles’ "rich Corinthian leather." That meaningless phrase, dreamed up by marketers and cooed by the actor Ricardo Montalbán, became emblematic of what defined a luxury vehicle.

Fifty years later, those words have been replaced by elements that are creating a new concept of automotive luxury: recycled PET bottles, coffee grounds and tree fiber.

"The definition of a premium automobile is changing," said Rüdiger Recknagel, Audi’s chief environmental officer. "It’s now who’s using the best materials with the least environmental impact."

As companies around the world turn their attention to reducing the effect their products have on the environment, carmakers are turning away from traditional materials that are hard to recycle, such as leather and plastics, and looking to alternatives that continue to convey quality. In manufacturing as well, they have moved to recycled components in an effort to use fewer resources and cut down on emissions.

Recycled materials make up 29% of a BMW vehicle, said Patrick Hudde, BMW’s vice president for sustainability supply chain. The company obtains 20% of its plastics from recycled materials, as well as 50% of its aluminum and 25% of its steel.

At Audi, the Mission: Zero program hopes to achieve a 30% reduction of vehicle-specific carbon dioxide emissions by 2025 compared with 2015, and to achieve carbon neutrality across its entire network by 2050; that includes suppliers, manufacturing, logistics and dealer operations.

General Motors expects to have 50% sustainable content by weight in its vehicles by 2030, said Jennifer Widrick, GM’s director of global color and trim. The company defines sustainable materials "as those that do not deplete nonrenewable resources or disrupt the environment or key natural resource systems."

And Swedish manufacturer Volvo predicts that by 2025, 25% of its plastics will be bio-based or from recycled materials. In addition, it’s looking to reduce its carbon footprint by 40% in four years, compared with 2018, and to achieve climate-neutral manufacturing at that time.

"We’ve had to switch suppliers when they can’t meet our recycling standards," said Anders Karrberg, Volvo’s head of global sustainability.

Ford expects that by 2035, half of its plastics will come from recycled or nonrenewable materials, and that the company will be completely carbon-neutral by 2050.

In addition to recycled metals and plastics, manufacturers are exploring the use of materials that were never before considered viable for vehicle parts.

Ford, in partnership with HP, the printer manufacturer, uses spent powders from 3-D printers to create injection-molded fuel line clips on F-250 trucks. It has identified 10 other parts that can be made from the material.

The company also has a partnership with Jose Cuervo, the tequila distiller, to use fiber from agave plants to reinforce window mechanisms. And at the end of last year, it introduced the use of headlamp housings made from coffee chaff, the unusable skin of roasted beans, which it buys from McDonald’s. The result" a housing with improved heat deflection, said Deborah Mielewski, Ford’s technical fellow of sustainability.

The company is looking at using orange and potato peels discarded by McDonald’s to make plastic parts more resilient, Mielewski said. And it is exploring using nylon fishing nets, which are often employed in the sea for only a few weeks, to strengthen parts.

"I hate plastic," Mielewski said. "I’m always worried about its impact on the environment."

While much of the world devours, and then discards, single-use water bottles, carmakers have figured out innovative ways to use them in manufacturing.

In markets outside the U.S. and Canada, available seat material in Audi’s new A3 compact sedan and its coming Q4 electric vehicle is made from recycled 1.5-liter PET bottles. For the A3, 45 bottles are used, ground up to create a granulate that is turned into a polyester yarn, accounting for 89% of the seat material.

GM also is looking into using PET water bottles that can be made into fabrics, including carpet. It already converts recycled PET plastic for wheel well liners, and uses other recycled plastics for license plate and radio brackets.

Even Ricardo Montalbán’s quintessential definition of automotive luxury, leather seating, is getting scrutiny.

Audi’s new high-end E-tron GT electric vehicle will offer a black design package that uses Dinamica, a suede-like microfiber, for seats. GM’s new electric Hummer will use artificial fibers for carpet, seating and headliners.

Polestar, the luxury electric sub brand from Volvo, uses a material it calls WeaveTech in lieu of leather. It’s derived from PVC and resembles the material in wet suits. The company’s goal is to make all its interior materials from recycled PET bottles, said Fredrika Klarén, Polestar’s head of sustainability. 

Klarén believes that customers will deem WeaveTech as luxurious as leather. "If you make the material beautiful, you will make it acceptable to the buyer," she said.

Despite its high price, the electric Hummer "will be leather-free," Widrick said. "We’ll use leatherette with a technical, repeatable, nonorganic grain." And Ford is looking at a wide variety of leather substitutes, Mielewski said.

Lenzing, an Austrian company, creates fiber from trees grown in sustainable forests and supplies it to Range Rover for seats in its Evoque. It’s also working on projects with Audi and Volvo to create woven "sustainable luxury" material as a leather substitute, said Georg Spindler, the company’s manager for specialty applications.

Yet using the proper materials is not the entire battle. When a vehicle reaches the end of its life, recycling sustainable products still can be a challenge.

BMW is designing vehicles with a reduced number of larger components to make recycling easier. Polestar wants to ensure that foam, which would make recycling difficult, is not stuck to its textiles.

And while not an immediate problem, carmakers are figuring out how to eventually recycle what will become of electrical vehicle batteries and their manufacturing scrap. In May, GM announced that it and LG Energy Solution will invest $2.3 billion to recycle battery materials, including cobalt, nickel, lithium, graphite, copper, manganese and aluminum, with 95% of the materials available for use in the production of new batteries. The process emits 30% less greenhouse gas than standard methods.

And Audi is working with a German-Indian company to use recycled batteries to supply green energy to rural Indian villages.

 

"These things," Mielewski said, "make sense to do, for humanity."

 

The 65-member board of directors of the National Automobile Dealers Association on Oct. 19 elected North Carolina dealer Mike Alford as its 2022 chairman.

"It is an honor and privilege to be elected to serve as NADA board chairman for 2022," said Alford, president of Marine Chevrolet Cadillac in Jacksonville, N.C. "The opportunity to chair this dynamic group of automotive leaders is both exciting and humbling."

Alford, 57, the current NADA vice chairman, will succeed Paul Walser beginning at NADA Show in Las Vegas in March.

Metro Washington, D.C., dealer Geoffrey Pohanka will become the NADA vice chairman; Tom Castriota, owner of Castriota Chevrolet in Florida will be the new NADA secretary; and Kirt Frye, president of Sunnyside Automotive Group in Florida, will become the association’s new treasurer.

 

Finding a car may be harder than in recent memory, but shoppers who do line up a new vehicle are more likely to qualify for a loan.

Researchers found access to loans in September was 5.5% easier than during the same period a year earlier. Generally speaking, credit access from banks, credit unions, and captive finance arms at automakers is nearly back to pre-pandemic levels.

However, only automakers have loosened up loans to the level where consumers were just as likely to qualify in October 2021 as they were in February 2020, before the pandemic took hold of the global economy.

That doesn’t mean car dealers are flush with vehicles, however. Inventory levels remain at historic lows with little change in sight as automakers struggle to source parts needed to assemble new vehicles. Supply chain bottlenecks, compounded by the global labor and computer chip shortage, make new cars challenging to locate.

Similarly, discounts on new vehicles — as well as incentive and rebate spending from automakers — are few and far between. Some automakers are now offering unusual spiffs, such as credit for accessory items, in place of rebates. 

 

While there may be some potential headwinds in 2022, brokers for dealership mergers and acquisitions report the dealership buy-sell market remains red hot.

"Our book of business is at a robust pace, and so is the rest of the industry," said George Karolis, president of the Presidio Group. "I think we’re at record levels."

The question for buyers and sellers is how long the current, favorable environment can last, with demand outpacing supply, record average transaction prices for new and used vehicles, and pent-up demand for parts and service. Cuts in dealership head counts and marketing budgets also have contributed to record profitability.

At the same time, interest rates are low, and for publicly traded dealership groups share prices are high, and that makes it more affordable to purchase dealerships partly with shares of stock, said Brodie Cobb, founder and CEO of the Presidio Group.

"The one thing that is just unbelievable is how inexpensive capital is today, how inexpensive debt is," Cobb said. "And every time those stocks go up, it gets cheaper and cheaper."

Another dealership brokerage firm, Kerrigan Advisors, said the total number of completed dealership transactions in first-half 2021 was 144, an increase of 27% year over year, and on track to surpass the record of 289 buy-sells last year. For the 12 months ended June 30, the total number was 320, up 11%, the company reported.

"Today, we are tracking to hit another record," said Erin Kerrigan, founder and managing director of Kerrigan Advisors. In a webinar hosted by the American International Automobile Dealers Association., she predicted 2021 buy-sells will pass 350.

One of those potential headwinds mentioned earlier is that would-be buyers may balk at high prices for dealerships, to the extent that high prices are based on the record profits they’re raking in, in the current highly unusual circumstances.

Earl Hesterberg, president and CEO of Houston-based Group 1 Automotive, said during a conference call to announce second-quarter earnings that the acquisition market is "as frothy as it’s ever been."

Kerrigan predicts the "froth" Hesterberg describes will last at least well into 2022.

"Dealers do not believe their dealerships will fully return to the low margins" at pre-pandemic levels, she said — not even when supply eventually recovers and high demand subsides. "Yesterday’s valuations seem ludicrous with regard to today’s profits."

 

A growing number of people who seek vehicle repair and maintenance work say they prefer auto dealership service departments over other repair facilities.

That’s according to the newly released 2021 Cox Automotive Service Industry Study. It indicates 34% of consumers prefer dealership service centers, a percentage point increase from 2018, and ahead of general repair shops. 

That is good news for dealers who over the years have faced challenges from independent shops and national car-care chains, which are geographically more prevalent than are car dealerships. 

Because of such competitors, Cox Automotive estimates dealers aren’t capturing about $214 billion in potential annual revenue.

Dealerships enjoy a reputation for doing quality service work — one reason for their popularity.

They also are cited as preferred because of their existing relationships with customers. The Cox Automotive survey indicates 55% of consumers say they go to a dealership because its service personnel know their vehicle better.

But dealerships continue to combat the perception that they are overpriced compared with the competition. The top barriers to returning to the dealership are not only cost but also location.

Another negative: Nearly 25% of polled consumers say their dealership service visits take longer than expected.

Exacerbated by the COVID pandemic, service departments cite parts delays from manufacturers (58%) and finding or hiring the right technicians (45%) as their primary operational frustrations. Both issues can affect consumer experiences.

On average, the survey found dealerships citing a recent decline in the consumer satisfaction they deliver, with only 55% of dealers believing satisfaction has improved in the past 12 months (down from 71% when surveyed in 2018).

Dealers have struggled for years with hiring and retaining qualified service technicians.

That remains a problem, according to the survey. Fifty-seven percent of dealership respondents say their service department is not fully staffed. Eight in 10 expect these labor shortages to continue or even worsen in the future.

Yet, the majority (60%) say they plan to hire more service technicians this year, indicating an investment priority.

"The industry is ripe for transforming the consumer experience," said Tracy Fred, vice president of operations for Xtime, a Cox Automotive business unit that offers online dealership appointment scheduling and other service-related digital tools on dealer websites.

"Elevating the entire service experience with a consumer-first mindset and the use of technology can help raise overall profits, capture additional market share and help mitigate the frustrations service departments are currently facing," she says. 

Dealers who say they’ve improved the customer experience in the past year more often offer services such as service pick-up and delivery, ridesharing, work progress tracking, online cost estimates and mobile check-in.

The survey says car owners’ feedback is that they want the ability to schedule their appointment online. Nearly 75% of dealers offer that option today. Some polled consumers said they didn’t know that.

Consumers also want to online review and approve repair estimates (67%) and access their vehicle service history (66%) which, according to those surveyed, are among the most critical digital features a service center should readily and transparently offer.

Top-performing service departments possess a consumer-first mindset and use technology to enhance the experience by offering digital tools and convenience-focused services, Fred said.

"Consumers," she said, "continue to stress the importance of a digital experience, and dealerships must evolve and offer flexibility by enhancing online capabilities.

"Meeting consumer demand for convenience by considering new service lines like ridesharing also can help combat location as a barrier."