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Tesla Wants Texas Auto Sales Regulations Loosened
An anonymous reader writes Tesla decided not to build its new $5 billion battery factory in Texas, but the company still wants to sell its electric cars directly over the Internet there. The automaker hopes that the possibility of future investment in the state will be enough to overcome the Texas Automobile Dealers Association lobby and change dealership laws. From the article: "Diarmuid O'Connell, Tesla's vice president for business development admits that getting the law changed won't be easy. 'Does the fact that we didn't site the factory there complicate things? Absolutely,' O'Connell said. 'But we're going to be doing a number of big battery factories in the coming years and we're going to need new vehicle factories as well, and there's a certain logic to doing those in Texas.' He didn't elaborate, but added that the state may not be so attractive if current sales regulations stand. 'If we're banned in Texas, why are we investing billions of dollars here?,' O'Connell asked."
If there's one thing Elon Musk is very good at, it's getting governments to do things for him.
So he'll probably get his way here eventually.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Tesla needs and is aiming to build lots of high capacity batteries, which are exactly what consumers need to store energy from solar / renewable sources and off-peak rate time periods to be used during more expensive on-peak rate times. Energy companies are among the largest consumers of fossil fuels, and have to be totally against any technology that eats into their profits, no matter what they say or do publicly. Their fossil fuel providers must also be in that camp, as they lose big time if their largest customer quickly becomes much less profitable, and sets the stage for personally owned renewable energy sources which they don't have a piece of.
I'm rooting for Telsa to succeed in spite of Texas, Big Oil, the energy companies, etc.
Bullshit. There's absolutely no reason why Tesla couldn't open a training program to begin certifying maintenance techs for their vehicles. If they are somehow able to service the car in such a "superior" way then they certainly have the ability to codify and document those "superior" procedures, then actually make techs who wish to become certified demonstrate an appropriate level of competency with the maintenance procedures. Then dealers wishing to provide "Tesla Certified" maintenance would simply require their techs to acquire that certification.
I don't think you understand the situation. Traditional dealers make a lot of their money selling warranties and overpriced service after the sale. Tesla operates a nationwide network of service centers and charges $600 for annual service. Why should Tesla be any more anxious to give up that service than your local Ford dealer is to recommend you use JiffyLube for oil changes?
Right now, Tesla has a de facto monopoly on the technical expertise required to service their vehicles. You can't take it down to the neighborhood mechanic for work, because they just don't know its systems. You'd have better luck with the local dryer repairman. It's in Tesla's interest to keep as much service in-house as possible, for exactly the same reasons as traditional dealers.
If those procedures don't exist, then the vehicle is not ready for mass market - Tesla WILL NOT be able to keep up with the maintenance work as their sales grow. Can you, for a minute, imagine if every time you needed anything done on your vehicle, you had to ship it to Nevada, and wait a couple weeks? Who's going to buy that shit?
You're not paying attention. Tesla has its own network of service centers, more-or-less equivalent to the traditional network of dealers. Tesla wants to maintain ownership, control, and share profits of those showroom/service centers, where traditional dealerships are legally required to be independent. Tesla is using the facts that their showrooms don't maintain an inventory and that their vehicles don't require exhaust, fuel, coolant, oil, and other extensive support systems to claim these locations are outside the traditional definition of "dealership" and may therefor remain Tesla-owned. They definitely have a scalable architecture for servicing their growing fleet. It's one of the reasons they're resisting the traditional independent dealer model.