Michigan Governor Considers Veto on Anti Tesla Bill

The world needs a hybrid solution. A few locations where one can see and select a new car to buy. Lots more locations closer to where one lives to get it serviced under warranty as well as later for difficult to diagnose repairs. A Mercedes dealer is doing something like this in our area and it is working out well. Tesla lacks a good service solution and the franchise guys (too many of them) have the service advantage, but it isn't coordinated.

@Vette71 - Not sure what you area talking about. Tesla right now has #1 customer satisfaction in service. So people are actually pretty happy with Tesla's way of servicing things. Obviously some locations Tesla has not opened a service center due to laws or other reasons. But in that case they send someone to your house to fix your car.

Regardless, manufacturers and consumers should be the ones who work out the details of how selling cars and servicing should work. Not government forcing of franchising.

The Tesla service model works for a low volume manufacturer of a high margin luxury car with sales concentrated in few geographic areas. Particularly where the owner has other vehicles in his garage as do most Tesla buyers. It doesn't economically scale up for a manufacturer selling a few hundred thousand vehicles a year across the USA, especially after a few years where a million or more vehicles of various configurations (model years, styles, price points, etc.) need to be supported. People will drive a distance to buy a car as they only do it every so many years. However service is used more often and needs to be closer to where they live, especially for people without a "fleet" in their garage. So centralize the buying, ala what Tesla has done, but geographically distribute the service which is basically what the franchise system has given us, albeit not with unified ownership. The franchise dealers make the bulk of their profit from service and used car sales, not selling new cars. The local dealer is being bought out with even Warren Buffet getting in the game recognizing where the profits are and aiming to unify the system more. Change is coming.

BANNING electric cars for no other reason than to protect the campaign donations you receive from the owners of auto dealerships and domestic car lobbyists is a quick way to END your chances re-election.

Careful. Elon Musk's empire (Tesla, Solar City, Battery Plant, etc.) is all built on financial benefits from governments (Federal and State) aimed at the "Greens". It is crony capitalism at its very best. If these "incentives" go away his whole empire is in jeopardy. He has yet to report a profit in his public companies. Both sides buy influence via political contributions.

Direct sales to consumers = price fixing.

Price fixing? In a free market? Forgive me, but have you been playing football without a helmet on?

@carloslassiter You clearly have no idea what "free market" means. Mercedes dealers are free market. You go into dealer #1 and if you don't like the price you can go to dealer #2 or #3 and negotiate a better deal there. That is free market. Tesla's direct sales idiocy is a slap in the face to free market.

If Tesla the manufacturer is also the owner of all the dealerships, that means there is no competition between dealerships on price. Thus, Tesla can dictate the price and there is NOTHING a consumer who wants a Tesla can do.

Tesla is blatantly anti-consumer on this.

I love how any talk of reining Tesla in makes Liberal fuquetards go straight to PMS mode. The hypocrisy is that Libtards who will never be able to afford a Tesla will defend Tesla's right to financially rape consumers. Is the idiot left really the new "70s Repoublican" in hipster clothing?

Given the ignorance and intolerance, I say yes.

This is an odd form of protectionism borne of what was termed the “mercantile system” in the 16th Cent. Merchants who benefited from this state-sponsored economic feudalism wielded immense political power and used their competitive advantage to discourage innovation and individual initiative until the Industrial Revolution. The advent of eCommerce and wide-spread adoption of direct sales marketing approaches across the board, have rendered the old model of manufacturer-supported dealer networks obsolete. Trade associations are impediments to open markets.