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Comment by bhickey | Hacker News Reader

I disagree with this point. I don't think the laws are there to thwart competition, but to stop manufacturers from exploiting their own dealers. If, for example, a Ford dealer takes on the risk of setting up shop it would be crummy for Ford to come in and annihilate them. Tesla is operating under a completely different sales model, I don't think you're going to see judges slavishly ruling to the letter of the law.

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I don't think so.

The whole point of the various laws is to make sure the dealers have a presence and are not cut out by the manufacturers, which is exactly what Tesla is trying to do.

There's nothing different about that, except that Tesla is trying any way conceivable to get around those laws and nobody else is. It's not surprising that they're updating the laws to catch up with Tesla's hacks that clearly circumvent the intent of the laws.

Put another way, not only will the car dealers get pissed, but why would ford, toyota, honda, GM, etc allow Tesla to operate with an advantage? One way or another, Tesla will wind up playing by the same rules as everyone else. And given how local and how dug-in the dealerships' political power is, I'm guessing they will suck it up and sell though dealers.

I hope I'm wrong. I would love to see manufacturer-run car stores.

Tesla never had dealerships, but GM and all the others did. These laws do exist, as you say, to prevent the manufacturer from cutting out the dealer after benefiting from the service the dealer provides to its customers, but Tesla never had any dealerships they could unfairly circumvent.

Those laws exist because dealers were able to get them passed, not because there is any sound reasoning behind them. Without them, the dealers would not exist today. They're not going to let tesla ruin that without a big fight.

I hope Tesla wins. I hate these made-by-middlemen-to-protect-middlemen laws. Recently in Turkey, there was a huge fight between banks and goldsmiths because banks decided to trade gold as well at better rates than offered by goldsmiths. Lots of fight later, banks are now restricted to accept and trade in 2-3 gold types. But I hope the industry is going to open up.

It is the middleman's job to remain relevant in changing economies, not resist changes so that relevancy is guaranteed. I think competition laws should be encouraged.

Yes this is the main point. Car dealerships were understandably nervous that the major automakers could suddenly implement a direct model in their state/location. They could decimate them overnight due to advantageous economics of selling directly to the public. The problem here is that Tesla never had a dealership network that it asked to go all in on their product only to come in behind them later and sell direct. What car dealerships really worry about is that if Tesla proves this to be the better sales model for 2013+ the big guys will want/need to copy this approach. That would be disastrous for them.

A few months back a preliminary injunction sought by some dealers in Massachusetts was denied. Sure there'll be a fight, but I think Tesla is going to end up on top.

http://www.teslamotors.com/it_CH/forum/forums/massachusetts-...

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