The franchising itself isn’t the problem - it’s a valid way for a company to scale up a service.

The issue is that they’re rolling it out before Tesla’s self-driving software has been proven to be safe. And there are questions about whether a vehicle without a steering wheel or side mirrors is actually road-legal.

Additionally, I’m not sure what kind of checks Tesla is doing for the franchisees. Will they let them roll out a service anywhere they like, irrespective of whether FSD is optimized for those road conditions? Based on the way they’ve approached FSD with consumers, my guess would be yes.