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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."
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
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
Bingo. You've hit the nail on the head. Dealerships make most their money in repairs, not in selling cars. Over the life of a car, the 5-20% profit they make on the sale is a small fraction of what they can make on repairs and maintenance.
If Telsa has the audacity to create a product that requires significantly less repairs, it puts dealerships at a competitive disadvantage, which is exactly where they should be in a truly free and open market.
Many in the fossil fuels business like to downplay the savings gained from small fuel costs for battery technology, but they don't want to address the larger costs associated with maintenance issues inherent in internal combustion technology because they know it makes electric car technology even more attractive financially.
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.
Forcing someone to use a middle man by law is pants-on-head retarded. If your model can't compete you're going to lose. This sounds an awful lot like RIAA/MPAA crap.
It's not like tesla is going to impact their bottom line heavily - hybrids and electrics are disliked by a lot of people. Not to mention most people don't have that kind of money to drop on a car.
This is just ridiculous. I hate people that bitch about "the corporations" at every possible chance, but this is almost certainly a result of our corporate overlords.
So these dealers are entitled BY LAW to make money off someone's product? And you wonder why conservatives bitch about market regulation (even if they do hypocritically regulate the market anyways) well here's why. Regulation is good, but this isn't regulation this is bribery of our elected officials.
I would give so much to be able to catch these corrupt fucks in the act of accepting a bribe.
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.
See my journal, I write things there