I think probably it's a disjoint group, or at least a disjoint set of circumstances. What the dealers are complaining about are the rules phasing in about what % of your sales need to be EVs. There are some successes, like the F-150, but there are also a ton of terrible legacy manufacturer EVs that nobody wants to buy that are kinda just sitting around. If Ford and the other carmakers could make vehicles as popular as the F-150 in quantity, I don't think the dealers would care.

I heard similar grumbles from Hyundai dealers around San Jose, CA, re: the Ioniq 5, and that model got a lot of accolades and is frequently recommended as an alternative to the Tesla Model Y for its category. I'm not sure what's going on is strictly a legacy model desirability issue.

It might be a "legacy dealers can't sell even good EVs because they don't know enough about them" issue though. Really hard to say, but that definitely would match my personal experience talking to a number of them.

> If Ford and the other carmakers could make vehicles as popular as the F-150 in quantity, I don't think the dealers would care.

They can make smaller EVs that are more popular than the larger and more luxurious vehicles, but they can't sell them as profitably as the larger vehicles.