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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."
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!
I think the reason we don't do heavy tariffs anymore is because it's already known that they only serve to damage the local economy. Sure you might save the sock salesman's job, but it'll have a much greater cost elsewhere in the economy that isn't immediately obvious.
Say we put that nickel tariff on socks, does that make Canada (or any country for that matter) find our socks more attractive than China's? Nope, in fact they're now less attractive because they cost more here. In Canada the sock prices will go down, but ours will be more likely to remain higher (That's the whole point right? Otherwise why bother with this tariff?) Everybody needs socks though, so we all pay more for socks here than Canada might pay (because they don't have said tariff.) Since Canada now pays less for socks, they also now have more money to spend on other things than we do. So in the end, we've crippled our own economy relative to theirs by sticking that tariff on there.
Historically this holds true - imports and domestic production rise and fall with one another. If you add that tariff to slow those imports, you're guaranteed to not only reduce exports, but you're also going to kill local jobs.
Go have a look at the effect of the Smoot-Hawley tariff act. That was the cause of the great depression. It is the ultimate lesson to be learned about tariffs and why mercantilism is flat out wrong on so many levels.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQQon4tjlSA
Personally I think we should get rid of all tariffs. Corporations love tariffs by the way - and so do unions. They want tariffs so that they can protect themselves against competition and raise prices instead of competing proper. They do this at the expense of somebody else's job somewhere else, not really giving a fuck about them.
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
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.
It's not illegal to buy the car in Texas. It's illegal for Tesla to sell them directly. You have to buy one from Tesla in Arizona or California, have it delivered, and register it with the state on your own (something the dealership usually does). All in all, it's not really a hard thing to do. More of a pain in the ass than just going to the show room and buying one, of course... But in my mind, worth it to stick it to the car dealer scum.
Tesla also cannot do warranty service on the car directly. They must use third party, but factory approved subcontractors.
the fuel costs must include the battery wear cost
That would fall under normal wear and tear, not fuel costs. And before you argue that battery is a costly component that gasoline cars lack: it is more than offset by much simplier car design with fewer moving parts. In fact, what I heard was that the dealers do not want Tesla's business because they would lose out on those fat maintenance cash flows.
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.
This isn't true. The tax credit is a pure credit, no sliding scale based on income. It's not a refundable credit, meaning that if your net federal income tax liability is less than $7500 then you'll only get a credit equal to the amount of your liability, but that's unlikely to be a problem for anyone who is buying a $70K car.
There is a phase-out of the credit that begins to kick in once a manufacturer has sold at least 200,000 of the qualifying model, and the amount of the credit depends on vehicle battery capacity ($2500 for 5 kWh of capacity, plus $417 for each additional kWh, up to $7500), but the Tesla qualifies for the full amount, and Tesla hasn't yet sold 200K cars, so neither of those are an issue.
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Dealers dont get stuck with anything. The cars on the dealer lot are not paid for. If the dealer goes out of business the manufacterer eats it all. The cars are financed to the dealer through a credit agency owned by the manufacterer on a no money down, no interest, net 45 day till sale arrangement.
As an owner of a Tesla, I must correct you. Maintenance costs are FAR lower than in my old BMW. I've driven it for almost a year now, and spent 10x overall than I did with a BMW or Mercedes. Do you forget that gas powered luxury cars have all those same features that require just as much (if not more) maintenance than an electric luxury car does? And no more $5-6 a gallon premium gasoline! The savings are astronomical. I know this from experience.
...dealerships exist only to fuck customers out of useless middleman money by skimming off the top and providing overpriced service.
I believe the term for this is, PIMP
My first new car was Saturn, with the no-haggle price up front. So when I bought it and ended up at the finance guy I told him I was paying in cash, and the sparkle left his eyes so fast I thought the lights had gone out. Nothing like being forced to do some paperwork without getting a commission to ruin a dealer's day.
Dealerships exist for the convenience of the manufacturers, not the customers.
Ironic, considering that dealerships (and the dealer franchise laws) were created in the first place over the objections of the car manufacturers for the benefit of customers.
The basic idea was that manufacturers would sell to dealers for relatively consistent prices, who would then sell to customers for a fair price, insulated from the manufacturers' shenanigans. This was decades before the "window sticker" or manufacturer-owned financing companies, the latter existing really only to bypass the rule that manufacturers can't sell directly to consumers.
Not to troll, but i wonder what would happen in the "IP" era of the US economy? If Ford tried this today would he still win or would the "patent holders"?
Only people unfamiliar with history would call today the IP era. The period from the late 1800's through the early 1900's had vastly more corporate, patent, IP and such shenanigans going on. Today is almost comically tame compared to then.
Elon Musk stated that his goal is for Tesla to not make a profit out of service. My experience when I broke something on my car (so it wasn't handled by warranty) was that their repair cost was a fraction of what the local Toyota dealership would have charged me to make a similar repair.
There really is a lot less to go wrong.
No oil and filter changes. No spark plugs. The coolant should last a lot longer. No belts to replace. No fuel pumps to die, exhaust leaks or oil leaks to deal with. No gaskets to be replaced or leak. No smog and related components like catalytic converters to deal with. No transmission fluid to change or clutches to wear out. The brake pads should last a lot longer since most braking is regenerative. The car is very well engineered. They did not cut corners to reduce costs in terms of suspension and drive train. According to a friend of mine who works there (an engineer on the drive train) they significantly over engineered things since they had to get it right the first time.
While I have had some things fixed under service, those things typically fall under creaks and rattles which are understandable given that my car has a VIN a little over 5000. They've addressed most if not all of the issues in later VIN numbers.
A gasoline engine has far more mechanical parts and things to go wrong, a lot more pumps and hoses, parts rubbing against each other, etc.
As for the battery, from my research the cells should be good for at least 3000 full charge discharge cycles. If I'm extremely conservative in estimating 200 miles of range per charge (I get significantly more) that works out to 600,000 miles.
There are some things that may wear out faster, such as the pop-out door handles (the early versions had problems). The electric motor, as opposed to an internal combustion engine, has no friction points other than the bearings, and it has a lot less than a gasoline engine.
One of the issues I had was the 12V battery dying. They got a bad batch of lead acid batteries and I ended up with one of them. They called me up when they detected the problem in the logs to schedule its replacement.
As for software issues, they regularly update it to fix bugs and add new features. They do this over the air and allow me to choose if and when to install an update.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
kWh is not an SI unit.
While h is not technically SI, it is officially sanctioned for use as a multiplier with SI. So saying that kWh is not SI is more of a half truth.
Quite simply, a Tesla (or any all electric car) has significantly less moving parts. Faults will occur, but susbstantially less often than with an ICE. Some of those faults though will require very specialist knowledge to fix though.
The Wankel rotary engine also had significantly fewer moving parts than a standard internal combustion engine, but a Mazda RX-7 was just as costly to maintain as any other car. Why? Because, it's not the moving parts in the engine that cause most of the maintenance costs, it's all the rest of them, like suspension, steering, brakes, air compressors, and the like.
So, you will need to get your oil changed less often, like not at all versus once a year, so you save $19.95 at the dealer, but all the other regular maintenance stuff is still there and then some since the Tesla is a specialized vehicle, one can expect it's parts and labor to be more costly. And unlike a regular automobile, you have to also maintain the charging/battery system, the dynamic braking, and a several other components that only an electric car will have.
Arguing that an electric car will save because of maintenance is probably not a valid argument. Arguing on fuel costs, possibly. But in reality, the argument should be on the total cost of ownership over say, 100,000 or 200,000 miles. The reason you don't see TCO figures for electric cars in those ranges is that the battery packs need to be replaced before then and when you figure in that cost, the savings disappear.
So, if you have an electric car and plan on keeping it, all the money you save on fuel, you should set aside to replace the battery pack when that time comes. Of course, you could just trade it in before then, but if the battery pack is shot, well, so will be the trade in value.
Charge cycles don't work that way. If you start at 80%, come down to 30%, then charge back to 80%... twice... that's one charge cycle, not two.
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