Why did the dealerships not want them? (Honest question, I have no idea about any of this)
Dealerships only make money on “the back end”, which is servicing.
Any vehicle that requires less servicing makes them less money, so they don’t want to sell them.
There is a hypothesis that dealers disincentivized salespeople from selling EVs due to a lower expected amount of service department revenue in the future. I work in the industry close enough to get a whiff of that and I never heard anything more than speculation.