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Car Dealers Complain To DMV About Tesla's Website
cartechboy writes "State and national car dealer groups have been battling Tesla Motors for years, trying to stop them from selling its electric cars directly to buyers. Most of the time, the dealers work behind the scenes to change state laws and and force Tesla to conduct its sales through 'independently-owned third parties' which are... well, car dealers. But in California, Tesla's operations are legal, so that tactic won't work. So dealers there are taking an interesting new tack — complaining to the DMV about Tesla's website."
The dealers have a few good points, but EVERYONE knows this is just sour grapes because the dealerships can't fleece potential buyers out of some more money off the top.
Fucking scum.
Telsa's claims might be misleading, but if you want a pathological lying sack of shit, look no further than your local car dealer.
After 30 years of automakers blatantly providing theoretical and incredibly optimistic EPA estimates for gas mileage, you'd think that dealers would be willing to give a little on another car maker fudging some other numbers on their site.
bitch about it.
"You want to know how to help your kids? Leave them the fuck alone." -George Carlin
And the pot meets the kettle...
there's a reason why they call it disruptive technology, scumbags
we don't need you
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I'm sure car dealers will have no troubles rallying massive grassroots support to put a stop to this menace to a cherished American institution.
Ain't free enterprise great in America? You can do anything, as long as you cut the vested interests in for a piece of the action. Thankfully though we're not a bunch of economically ignorant Neanderthals that would do something stupid like put a nickel tariff on a pair of socks. That would be interfering in commerce!
It is a stupendous car, the ordering and delivery process was a dream, and the customer support after the sale has been flawless. The other dealers can simply go pound sand! Rather than bitching, try doing everything right like Tesla!
Henry Ford fought the cartel of car manufacturers called American Motor Manufacturers Association which claimed patent rights to the automobile and demanded royalty payment for all car makers. Ford defied them, fought them all the way to the Supreme Court and won back in 1900s. Hope Musk fights the dealers, their cartels and their political shenanigans and win. As soon as I can afford it, I will buy a Tesla.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
We haven't had a successful direct-to-consumer manufacturing relationship since the 1900s.
It recently blasted Tesla Motors [NSDQ:TSLA] by accusing it of deceptive marketing and pricing practices in the information it shows on its website.
The "It" in this quote is the auto dealers, a very well known group to be the paragons of virtue and personification of integrity when it comes to selling automobiles and providing accurate information.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
"It's official, NetCraft confirms it: The conventional heat engine is dying.
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered conventional heat engine community when IDC confirmed that conventional car maker market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of all car sales. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that conventional heat engines have lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. The conventional car market is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Motor Trend comprehensive car test."
Seriously, I don't think Microsoft even astroturfed this much when Apache gave IIS the reach-around. You know what would be nice? A moratorium on Tesla posts for a while. There is no new information in any of them.
I'd call it even, personally.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
...when companies are fighting it.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
From the fine article:
Tesla fails to provide required information and shatters the notion of comparison finance shopping by including the potential availability of incentives, gas savings, and tax savings into final payment quotes for prospective customers.
So the beef is that Tesla isn't being clear about everything and that upsets the dealers. hmm..
In my local paper, the dealers have ads in every Sunday that advertise a low price. As it was a few weeks ago, I was looking to buy a minivan for the family (I'm not completely domesticate, I still have my convertible). Great price of $22k for a Town and Country...pretty amazing actually. Way at the bottom of the ad were the caveats--includes first car buyer discount, veteran discount, bonus trade-in amount, etc.
Looking at the discounts there was no way you could be eligible for all of them at the same time. In my case, none of them. Yeah, those Tesla guys are devious and misleading.
I love the sound of distortion in the morning -- webcommando
Just trying to make an honest livi---
wait
Where is it written that we have to pick exactly one "good guy" and one "bad guy" in every conflict, cheering one blindly and booing the other mercilessly?
Does fact that car dealerships are mounting a buggy-whip-industry-protection campaign mean that Tesla earns a free pass on what really is some pretty deceptive marketing practices?
A plague on both their houses. If you want honestly, you're not getting it from anyone associated with the auto industry.
It is really shameful that Tesla is misleading customers with deceptive advertising about its electric cars. Here is a part of the complaint:
"... the Association says that purchase prices on Tesla's website routinely include a $7,500 federal TAX CREDIT, despite the fact that the Congressional Budget Office states that only 20 percent of shoppers qualify for the alternative vehicle credit."
None of the members of the California New Car Dealer's Association would ever stoop so low. Especially GENERAL MOTORS dealers. Especially since, according to this report: http://cncda.org/resources/10-20-08_CNCDA_Ltr-GMAC_CEO_Alvaro_deMolina.pdf GENERAL MOTORS dealers represent over 25% of CDCDA's members. Surely none of them would ...
Oh wait.
http://www.chevrolet.com/volt-electric-car.html
"Chevrolet 2014 Volt"
"Net price shown includes the FULL $7,500 TAX CREDIT"
Never mind, move along, nothing to see.
Remember this next time some businessman says he shouldn't be regulated because competition will sort everything out.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
hey bro you should check out the novel Bleeding Edge by Thomas Pynchon that just came out last week...it might not have any hot grits in it but it has a lot of other great dotcom nostalgia and enough conspiracy kook shit to be a slashdot must read...kinda surprised they didn't post an article on it actually...
They want to force Tesla to sell through them so they can jack up the prices on a product in demand.
I agree - it does seem to be sour grapes but they do have some good points. However they do seem to miss one. Tesla claim that you save money on petrol. While true if you factor in the cost of the wear on the battery per km driven then cost of an electric car's fuel is actually far higher than a petrol car. With the cost of petrol continuously increasing and battery lifetimes increasing at some point electric cars will win but any fair comparison of the fuel costs must include the battery wear cost.
Car dealers are in the same boat as the media industry. Totally clueless how to adapt to the information age. Maybe at one time it made sense but not any more.
My karma is not a Chameleon.
kettle.. meet pot.
car dealers have been using "deceptive marketing and pricing practices" for decades.
the car dealers association must be about as brain dead as other industry 'associations'.. the DMV has no jurisdiction here... try the state attorney's office --- or are they afraid that the state a.g. would turn around and investigate its members (the dealers), too.
The DMV is not the proper authority to worry about fair business practices.
Perhaps the auto dealers should next complain to every state organization...
Ooooh, the Division of Motor Vehicles!
They'll take care of it!
I heard that when national and state car dealership associations took a number, it was 3503.
MV is now serving number 12.
Read a magazine, boys.
You guys used to serve a valuable purpose. Yes, you've always screwed us as hard as you could get away with, but hey, can't fault you for following the American Way to the American Dream.
But now? Congratulations, the internet has made you nothing more than the place I go to test drive your products before I let the nearest 50 of you bid against each other for my next buy (and don't think I won't buy from the other side of the country if someone there has a good enough sale going on to cover the cost of shipping the damned thing to me).
You had a good run. Congratulations. Now cash out before you run out of cash. Simple as that.
Please, go down gracefully. Don't let this turn into yet another "when you can't compete, legislate" disaster. That just never goes well for the "legacy" side of the battle.
Of course, we'll get a bunch of comments on how this proves that business men are hypocrites because they are against regulation accept where it benefits them and how stupid the libertarians are.
But this is precisely the libertarian argument - if government becomes (overly) involved in business, rent seeking behavior is the natural result. Capitalism is a cruel mistress and businesses routinely fail, so they look for any edge they can get.
In a lightly regulated market with low barriers to entry, they have to compete on service, price, convenience, etc. In a more heavily regulated market, first movers and existing and heavily capitalized businesses look to create new barriers to entry to prevent competition and create artificial scarcity to keep prices high. This can be via licensing (taxis and beauticians), regulations that have high fixed costs but low per unit/worker costs, monopoly/captive markets like dealerships and liquor distribution, and other regulatory structures that that favor fewer, larger firms to more, smaller firms.
Ironically, the dealership structure began as a true capitalist trade-off - dealership networks allowed automobile companies to become large, centralized and efficient by helping to limit their capital costs - as inventory was created, it was immediately purchased and distributed across the country to local sources of capital. Car manufacturers got less money per vehicle but could concentrate their capital on plants, raw goods, workforces, etc. That dealership network absorbed a huge amount of the capital costs of the vehicles themselves. Once a lot of the manufacturers' fixed costs were paid off, the dealers saw the writing on the wall and used their local political connections to modify state laws everywhere to fix the existing model in place.
Playing devil's advocate for one minute, the summary is misleading when it says dealers are "working behind the scenes to change state laws". In fact, they are working in the open to preserve the existing state laws - Tesla was the company attempting to have various laws changed to their benefit (in the Texas case, to their sole benefit as it was very narrowly written). That said, I would prefer a more broadly written version of the "Tesla law" to prevail.
If they were doing everything right then why the need for the tax credit? Shouldn't it stand on its own without tax payers subsidizing the purchase? I have a coworker that just bought the P85 and says the same thing about the company and experience. The car is cool as hell and it's unusual to see a car without a tailpipe. I just don't think its reasonable for tax payers to fund this obvious luxury purchase. Not only that...he's no longer paying for gas or the gas taxes that pay for the roads he drives it on.
I propose we round up all the individual dealers responsible for this reprehensible behavior, line them up, and one by one, deliver to them a good swift kick in the jimmies.
This space unintentionally left blank.
If Delissio wants to sell pizza in MY neigbourhood, then I want a slice!
Years ago I worked for a company that did a tiny bit of work for one of the big 3 US auto companies. Their VP of marketing told me that it was his dream to eliminate the dealer network. He basically blamed a huge amount of his company's woes on the dealers. His dream was that you could buy your car from a grocery store or by phone from a newspaper ad and maybe this whole new internet thing was just the key. It was his opinion that customers were growing to really hate the US car companies because the dealers were so sleazy. But it was his opinion that the car companies had grown to accommodate their sleaze. He thought that all the different models and features only served to confuse the customers.
So wherever that guy is I am pretty sure he is cheering Tesla on. Plus based on what he said, I suspect the other manufacturers are watching and hoping but keeping quiet about it.
A spectacular pile of legislation makes cost calculation very complex affair.
Why is it Tesla's responsibility to accurately calculate the real cost of owning their car?
If they advertise the lowest possible cost under ideal circumstances (Everyone else does that too) then it is up to the buyer to check and see how it applies to them.
If the buyer finds that process too hard, then blame the overly complex legislation not Tesla.
Actually, that tax refund is misleading also. The maximum tax credit is $7,500.00, but it adjusts on a sliding scale inversely proportional to your gross taxable earnings. In reality, anyone who can afford a $70,000.00 car will get a significantly smaller credit, like $1,500.00 or less.
YMMV, and I am not a tax accountant, especially not your tax accountant. Run your own personal numbers through TurboTax or some such before buying any hybrid or other car that qualifies for such a credit.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
Too busy writing about xbox plugs (in both senses of the word).
The fact that there are laws that require car dealerships is ridiculous. It's just as ridiculous as forcing people to pay car insurance or home insurance in some states. Insurance companies fought to force people to buy it and car dealerships fought to force people to go through them. It's all about greed, greed and more greed. Cut the middle-man, I want an Amazon for vehicles.
Let the free market decide.
On the last car I bought, "painted door handles" was listed as a "feature."
And these guys are worried about deceptive marketing practices? There's the pot calling the kettle black...
Editors ahoy........
Or is it because it's an electric car, it can't be good?
The mechanism *that drives the frigging car* is a hell of a lot simpler. You know, that thing that needs a gearbox that runs at thousands of rpm and change gears between an engine going at thousands more to wheels going hundreds and changing many times?
All gone.
Do you think that the only thing that goes wrong in an ICE car is the engine? There are "plenty of things that could go wrong, break, or be subject to periodic servicing" in an ICE car that isn't the ICE.
Have the communists really taken over usa?
Lets apply the same laws to iPhones, and iApple stuff, and that Apple cannot do any warantee/services of their own products in Texas. Samsung would love that law.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
$40k http://www.nissan.com.au/Cars-Vehicles/LEAF/Overview for $85/week
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
WTF? Dealers complaining that Tesla may be deceiving customers about the true cost of their cars? Have they tried to purchase a car at their own dealerships?
You're lucky you can get close to knowing what the final price will be before you start to waste hours in the salesperson "office" wondering why after all these decades they still perform the "Wizard of Oz" maneuver of having to ask the boss for a better price...
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
Flame away, but in order to obtain warranty service, one must generally take their vehicle to a dealer with a shop that has the right tools for fixing the car.
Tesla has no such capability. When a Tesla breaks, what then? I'm stuck until I can either ship my car to California, or Tesla can ship a mechanic to me, and hopefully find a place that will let them use their shop to fix it. That does not engender confidence.
This is a terrible model for consumers. It is absolutely right to require there be a warranty service infrastructure available to them for the expedient, convenient, and dependable repair of their vehicles under warranty.
I didn't read every single posting so I might have missed one. However, the gist of the many that I did read related to maintenance costs or gripes about dealers. Both areas had posts that were accurate and both had posts that were either BS or typical /. anti-capitalism rants.
Wellthe dealer rants are sort of right, in this case, but they are missing the real issue. Tesla's high-end luxury cars are not a threat to most dealers. The threat is that a car maker is selling cars without a dealer. This is a threat because, if they allow it, then the other car makers (Ford, GM, Chrysler,Toyota, Nissan, Honda, etc.) will finally have some traction to get rid of the middleman dealers. For the high population areas, they would love to do that and keep more of the profit themselves. I believe that you would still see dealers in the low-population areas because the risk reward ratio isn't nearly as favorable to them.
By the way, there has been and always will be a case for various dealers at different points in a market's life cycle. Calling them low-lifes just because they are dealers is childish and just wrong. They are no more wrong and crappy than a /.'er that thinks that everything they want in life should be free - just because they say so.
The car dealers association is one of if not the biggest contributor to political campaigns. I assume it is the same in the rest of the country.
So why should we expect the laws protecting them to change? But in NC they did, for Tesla. There was a grassroots campaign, Elon came and gave a test drive to the guv, and I assume a lot of campaign contributions were promised, and the law was changed to allow them, and only them, to sell direct.
Baby steps, but we can win if we are persistent.
They just move the power generation to someone else's back yard.
Why is there no hype around a CNG car that you can buy today?
http://automobiles.honda.com/civic-sedan/civic-natural-gas.aspx
It does not have any (large)(expensive) toxic batteries.
It can be worked on buy a regular internal combustion mechanic with minimal special tools.
You pay no gas tax.
You do not have to pass emissions testing.
It enjoys the same HOV/Clean Car status
You fill it up in your garage. Never go to a gas station again.
It has almost ZERO emissions (tail pipe).
The infrastructure is already in place, hang a pump on the wall of your garage and plug the hose in when you park.
The fuel cost is cents per gallon not dollars
The performance is on par with gasoline.
I'll tell you why, it doesn't have any exclusive patents (all expired) for corporate exploitation,
or new technology to lock you into a brand.
Rick B.
That was one part of the equation, but a bank crisis, crop failures, and stock market collapse also created the conditions for the Great Depression. Unless you're saying that Smoot-Hawley Act was the cause of those as well, in which case you're ascribing magical powers to it.
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
Warning to all Car Dealerships involved with such activity. We are Anonymous.
Attempting to seie control of a free market, is no different than the bankers of wall street, forcing people to use their services. It's a form of theft and extortion, in what should be a free and open market. It infringes on freedom.
If car dealerships would like to resell Tesla vehicles, they can apply to Tesla, and convince tesla to allow it. But attemting to force the situation, is not accepted.
Any dealership involved with these activities may face the wrath of Anonymous.
We do not forgive, we do not forget.
Expect us.
Charge cycles are not a lithium ion batteries worst problem. Rather it is age. They lose 20% of their capacity every year in ideal temperatures. In Phoenix the nissan leaf was losing upwards of 50% of its capacity (read range) in the first year due to the heat. Also I wish the batteries weren't so heavy, I like tiny light cars, and the tesla roadster's battery pack was 450kg, the only reason they got the weight down to 2700lbs was all the carbon fiber. ICE + fuel tank still weighs less than electric motor + battery pack. I want an electric car, for the torque and the elegant simplicity, but the battery life is a deal breaker for me until my city has a recycling station for them, and the cost of swapping them once a year is even with the maintenance on an ICE car.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
Any time middlemen are fighting for their existence, it's time to let them fail. I don't fundamentally need a car dealer. It's just the current method of acquiring new vehicles. The only real service they provide to a car-buyer is test-drives and a pick-up location. There are surely more cost-effective and straightforward ways to get past those obstacles.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
Apparently the claim the dealers are making is that Tesla are misleading consumers about the actual cost of the vehicles they are selling.
If only the US didn't recognize business method patents, like the rest of the world, the dealers wouldn't have a case.
When I lived in the US there was nothing I dreaded more than going to the car dealership.
There's no reason why buying a car should be any more complicated than buying a computer or a TV. It should have a sticker with the price on it and that's that. But instead you have to spend hours of unpleasantness haggling over price as if you were at some flea market in Marrakech or you get ripped off, and the embarrassing charade of the salesweasel having to go upstairs and ask the boss for "a better price" (i bet they just go up there, get a soda from the drinks machine, and then wander down a few minutes later as if they have been doing some hard bargaining). And the pricing dealers use is completely opaque.
And when you go in knowing exactly what you want, the salesweasel puts on a high pressure sales act to try and get you to buy something more expensive. "Oh you don't want a truck with manual transmission, they don't come with leather seats blah blah blah". I don't care about leather seats, it's a pickup truck, it goes dirty places, and the last thing I want in a vehicle that will be going in the dirt are expensive leather seats.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Nice to see that Tesla's just as slimy and deceptive as all the other dealers out there.
"When the buying and selling are regulated, the first things bought and sold are the legislatures."
Horror stories like these are the rule, not the exception. A quick look at the world shows massive corrupion, even in nominal democracies, where the purpose of going to work for government is the kickbacks. And not just as an elected official. The going rate in India for approving a new building is 1/10th the cost of the building.
We are fools to think tbisn't a heavy lien in the US because the press is so gosh darned awesome at exposing things. How do you hink most congressmen become multimillionaires?
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
If Elon Musk gets busted for trying to make a big cocaine deal, then we know they have run out of new ideas at destroying a competitor.
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
It's just as ridiculous as forcing people to pay car insurance or home insurance in some states.
I'm not familiar with any home insurance requirements here in Texas, but I have a mortgage, I'm sure the finance company requires it, just like they require auto insurance to finance a vehicle. But states don't (to my knowledge) require insurance that pays you for your own fault accidents, only to pay someone else for your fault accidents.
And while we're complaining about this, it's also just as ridiculous as forcing people to buy health insurance.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
While the engine isn't based on "timed explosions", I'm not sure how one avoids the need for lubricant (oil or something similar, a grease at the least) on key parts with high-RPM movement?
"It also notes that Tesla's quoted new-car prices net out a $7,500 Federal income-tax credit for purchase of a plug-in electric car. According to the California dealers, just 20 percent of all car shoppers qualify for that credit--and the group attributes that statistic to the Congressional Budget Office..." says the industry that touts 0.9% APR financing (for well qualified buyers - suspect that number is a mite lower than 20%).
Steve Jobs here:
As long as I don't have to get a license plate, I'm good.
The fact that it doesn't eat paint matters a lot on a bicycle. And FWIW, I find the feel of glycol crud on my hands is much more grotesque than Pentosin.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.