BREAKING: Michigan Governor Bans Direct Sale Of Tesla Vehicles

No surprise here. Protectionism at it's finest. Since Tesla builds nothing in Michigan, why not ban them to benefit the big three and prolong the death of an antiquated method of selling and conducting automotive sales and service.

If GM could manufacture and sell a product direct to consumers, without a dealer or "franchisee", they would do it in a "heartbeat"!

GM, what happened to your restructuring plan of pairing down dealership numbers and investing in better social media campaigns and marketing plans to sell cars over the internet?

It's one thing to provide 5 star service/delivery on a $70,000 car to high minded first adopters, but the dealership is the best way to sell $15,000 econocrap to everybody else. Not saying that protectionism is right, but economically, it's more efficient to let local dealers handle customer service and marketing. Tesla sells itself because it's niche and volumes are so low, but if Tesla was trying to move 1 million cars per month against Toyota/Honda/GM/Ford, it would realize that independent dealerships are the only way to manage inventory and leverage local marketing expertise.

This whole direct to consumer model will start to fall apart (as a business case for Tesla) when it begins to scale 10x, just watch.

GM/Ford have already worked out every possible way to make money selling cars, and the direct to consumer works great for niche products (the Volt could have taken this channel), but cannot work for high volume sales due to the sheer cost of logistics, service, recalls, etc.

GM and Ford should encourage Tesla to sell direct as it will be financial suicide when Tesla hits that critical mass of volume and can't reverse course. The domestics are paranoid and should just help Tesla along with this direct to consumer model. Again, small volume high priced cars is OK, but high volume low priced cars means zero margins for the manufacturer.

Good. Well, Tesla is all about selling their unproven piece of junk to many customers, so I believe Michigan should fight more against Tesla, as I do not want to see that Toyota Camry-wannabe trying to tell people that it is some kind of a "luxury" car.

Tesla cars can't even be used that much anyway, as it is not even powered by gas, so might as well ban this crap.

Not to mention many rich Americans would "still" rather buy a hybrid German car. The Americans don't even like Tesla.

Only a few nerdy people love something like a Tesla.

AMEN! This is a MASSIVE score for consumers. Tesla's price fixing scheme needs to get slapped down.

You're beyond ignorant about the relationship between manufacturer and dealers.

Moreover, if it took 6 hours to buy a car for cash you obviously were not smart enough to walk out. That's 100% YOUR fault not theirs.

So because you don't have the balls to speak up, you want price fixing that rapes consumers?

Idiocy!

Once again, GM proves the **ONLY** it can survive is through the intervention of corrupt politicians.


These politicians and lobbyists, and the executives at GM who support them, are absolutely disgusting.