There's a much simpler reason. You can't test-drive a car online. One wouldn't need to. One could test drive a car at a dealership. I'm not sure how that's

There's a much simpler reason. You can't test-drive a car online. One wouldn't need to. One could test drive a car at a dealership. I'm not sure how that's a simpler reason than the fact that selling new cars without a dealer is banned in the US. Most buyers research their new cars on the internet even though they can't test drive them on the internet. Since they're on it already, ordering a car would not be difficult to swallow (there are already laws that allow buyers to return a new car for any reason within a certain time frame.) Programmers are taught to try to cut out waste and save time and money, and they've tried to do so here. From what I recall reading, web sites had been shut down because they tried to skip the dealers. This shows that it is not a lack of customer confidence, but the force of the law that is keeping things as-is. Finally, the argument that "one can't test-drive cars online" would be an important enough deterrent to an all-online purchase process does not consider that a new approach might be developed to allow potential buyers to test drive a car (such as for a price). More realistically, consumers will test drive the cars of their friends, that were already highly rated on the internet, such as... the cars that are already popular today. A downside is that with fewer dealerships and the new development of getting charged to test drive a car, cars will become less fun to drive and more feature- and safety-oriented. But, that is already the trend. Luxury car manufacturers will still have dealerships for that reason.