Playing by the rules against incumbent manufacturers. edit: didn't Tesla repay a big federal loan a few weeks ago, many years before they had to? Good citizenship is fair.
"Tesla repay a big federal loan a few weeks ago, many years before they had to?"
Why does this matter? They were given a large loan. That large loan gave them a large runway to have one profitable quarter, which allowed them to pay back the loan by issuing shares and bonds. Another car manufacturer couldn't do the same if you gave them $500M loans? Why should Tesla get it and not others?
Do the incantations "disintermediate all supply chains" and "disrupt all mature industries" suddenly lose all their magical HN mojo when confronted with the Kryptonite of the car industry?
Who forces car manufacturers to go through a dealer network? Or rather, who forbids them from selling direct to the public? Doesn't that constitute unfair restraint on trade?
I'm serious here. (Non-American speaking.) Is there some law that mandates that cars can only/must be sold through dealers?
Maybe it actually protected consumers three decades ago, but now, consumers have access to more than enough information to make those kinds of decisions for themselves.
A not insignificant portion of GM/Chrysler's restructuring costs were buyout payments for dealers, many of whom were not profitable.
Aren't the incumbent manufacturers the ones who lobbied for those dealership laws in the first place, to raise the bar for entry into the market place? (And if not, haven't they had year with piles of cash beyond our wildest dreams to buy off legislators and get the law changed?)
I am perfectly happy to have the federal government give out loans to startups to disrupt stagnent industries. Can you imagine how our ISP industry would be doing if, instead of passing laws which make it impossible to disrupt, the US government was occasionally throwing half a billion at people who wanted to try? Granted, Elon Musk wasn't exactly at the 'rags' phase of a rags-to-riches story when he got his loan...
Why? Why not just let everyone sell direct?