[HN Gopher] Tesla Will Have to Ship Its Texas-Built Cars Out of ...
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       Tesla Will Have to Ship Its Texas-Built Cars Out of State to Sell
       Back to Texans
        
       Author : belltaco
       Score  : 18 points
       Date   : 2021-05-29 19:38 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.thedrive.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.thedrive.com)
        
       | sschueller wrote:
       | Earlier discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27322568
        
       | Finnucane wrote:
       | I guess it's a matter of priorities. The TX legislature seems to
       | be moving with a quickness to get voter suppression bills passed.
        
       | Jiocus wrote:
       | Can somebody shed some details on why manufacturers are
       | prohibited from selling their vehicles directly to Texan
       | consumers?
        
         | Finnucane wrote:
         | It's not just Texas. Most states have similar laws. In the
         | past, most dealers were local, so it was easy for state
         | politicians to put their interests over Detroit's.
        
         | MandieD wrote:
         | The Texas Auto Dealers Association has a remarkably strong grip
         | on the Texas legislature.
        
         | thrill wrote:
         | The idea of non-OEM dealerships supposedly was originally to
         | increase competition by preventing OEMs from competing with
         | dealers to run them out of business, though it was likely way
         | oversold since 100 years ago there were far more OEMs than
         | there are now.
         | 
         | Today, when it's trivial to price compare online between
         | different offerings from different OEMs, the entire structure
         | of dealership laws exists to keep the large donations from
         | those businesses flowing to politicians. I watched an online
         | video of a Texas committee meeting with the public, and
         | lobbyists, considering allowing such direct sales. The thing
         | that jumped out to me was the political grandstanding about how
         | dealerships donate "so much money to little league baseball
         | teams, etc.", with no mention of their own significant
         | reception of such monies, and with no discussion that removing
         | the middleman of dealerships would mean less money extracted
         | from the buyer to pay for all those shiny showrooms, meaning
         | such money could be donated directly by consumers to _their_
         | favorite organizations. But the most remarkable thing to me was
         | watching the politicians greet the automobile dealers lobbyist
         | with some pleasure by name when she got up to talk and
         | mentioning how often they saw her.
        
         | gutino wrote:
         | There was a time when a dealer would invest in a building, a
         | deal with car companies and then, car companies would look at
         | what dealers sell more cars, and establish in front of them a
         | competing dealership run by the company itself, which resulted
         | in a better price, bankrupting the independent dealer.
         | 
         | But Tesla always sold their cars directly, there is no risk
         | that they will compete with any third party dealership because
         | they do not make deal with them. That is why that law does not
         | make sense to be applied to Tesla. Its a shame Texas define
         | themselves as one of the most free states and still have this
         | law
        
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       (page generated 2021-05-29 23:02 UTC)