Seriously though, what's so bad about distributing Tesla vehicles through a dealership franchise?
Is it simply because it's less profitable than direct sales? Is it not laissez-faire enough?
Is it simply because it's less profitable than direct sales? Is it not laissez-faire enough?
From the consumer standpoint? That's easy: 1) another middleman adds to the price of the product and 2) there is a reason why people hate car salesmen.
From Tesla's point of view? Who's going to do this? You're talking about a car that sells single digits per year in all but very large or very specialized markets. So, the income per year for a franchise would be less than $100,000 per year at best. Tesla would have to subsidize that franchise to such an extent that it would effectively be selling direct anyway. But I suspect that there are bunch of franchise control laws that would cause issues, too.
The biggest issue everybody has is that these laws are blatantly protecting local car sales franchise monopolies with absolutely no justification from any consumer protection perspective.
See the case of the abandoned Stretchla project[1] and the other news report of a salvage titled car that the company refuses to enable charging on because it was worked on by an unapproved mechanic.
But why shouldn't an automaker be free to decide how it distributes its product?
Now. What I don't like about this argument is sort of how snarky everyone gets toward people hostile toward Tesla. The way they do it probably makes more sense than the status quo. But being from the midwest, I can definitely get how threatening that can be. That's for sure not an excuse, but people do need to realize in their rhetoric that disruption hurts sometimes. And we shouldn't be blind to that.
So much for the old adage: "there are no stupid questions"
However before downvoting please consider that the financial aspects are by far not clear to everyone, especially not to the programmer audience of HN.
I too would love to read an earnest analysis of the impact on Tesla's sales were they to restructure their Michigan sales efforts to comply with the law by starting to use middlemen.
Edit: Even the article itself throws that question up: "it’s not actually obvious that Tesla’s decision to operate without dealers will end up being a more profitable business model in the long run, given the valuable marketing, sales, and maintenance services that many local dealers provide."
And in particular how much do the Dealers themselves add - these are very rich men, and all so because the state has decided to force me to pay for their existence. And how much of that money goes back to the Capitol to line politicians pockets?
As i said, an earnest explanation is warranted.
"It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself."
To some people - like myself who have had universally horrific and expensive experiences with dealerships (and in my case the much better, cheaper, and competent experiences with non-dealer mechanics, and used car salesmen of all people.) dealers are bad and their existence should not be propagated. They are bad enough that I could easily downvote the question on that alone (without the political angle which lucio summed up nicely) if I was fast with the downvote button.
Explaining that and that alone was my goal - and one it looks like I failed at.