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Kill the laws that keep car dealers in business

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Re: Kill the laws that keep car dealers in business

#101

Post by lsaferite »

nothrabannosir wrote: post #78
joosters wrote: post #61

"Don’t ever take a fence down until you know the reason why it was put up" You can't write a balanced article on car dealerships without researching why these laws were enacted in the first place. So many people here just assume "oh, it's because of greed" - but perhaps you should spend a short time first of all investigating why these laws were created and the problems they were trying to solve. Likewise, you can't…

"Don’t ever take a fence down until you know the reason why it was put up" This is the most frustrating thing about uncommented sleep() calls sprinkled through a codebase.

Commit history maybe?

Re: Kill the laws that keep car dealers in business

#102

Post by akshat_h »

nomercy400 wrote: post #32
jpfr wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Europe, only used cars are sold directly off the parking lot or showroom of the dealer. Normally, you choose the options (color, engine options, leather seats, ..) and the car is built for you. You can pick it up some weeks/months later. Manufacturers of high-priced cars may invite you to pick up the car at the plant when it comes off the line. They have a special "experience" designed around that.

To be honest, should it really take months to produce and ship that one car through europe? Surely assembly lines are faster than that.

I think distribution would be a big factor here as well. Ideally manufacturers would like to batch shipping as well, which may require some minimum number of orders from a particular area for a particular type of car.

Re: Kill the laws that keep car dealers in business

#103

Post by stepanhruda »

Spooky23 wrote: post #80
joosters wrote: post #61

"Don’t ever take a fence down until you know the reason why it was put up" You can't write a balanced article on car dealerships without researching why these laws were enacted in the first place. So many people here just assume "oh, it's because of greed" - but perhaps you should spend a short time first of all investigating why these laws were created and the problems they were trying to solve. Likewise, you can't…

That's very logical. But the en vogue approach today is to disrupt everyone out of business because technology entrepreneurs and capitalists are "good guys". The argument for this stuff is mostly "OMG Tesla is awesome!". But folks forget/ignore that having to deal with A fortune 50 company as a consumer isn't fun either (recall: AT&T in the old days). Your local car dealer may have annoying commercials, but the folks…

You just knocked a strawman down

Re: Kill the laws that keep car dealers in business

#104

Post by PantaloonFlames »

Shivetya wrote: post #26

How do you plan to buy out all the existing investment these dealerships have? You certainly cannot legislate away their property without compensation. What about the jobs? That is no small number. With those go all the local taxes, benefits, and such as well. Dealer direct, sounds good. Until you find out that car you really want has a demonstration center that is too far away, in a place you don't want to go. Until…

> You certainly cannot legislate away their property without compensation. What about the jobs? That is no small number. With those go all the local taxes, benefits, and such as well.

Whoa. Nobody is "taking over" the dealerships. What is being discussed is changing the laws that protect their monopoly.

Modifying the law to allow Dis-integrated deliver of sales and service is not going to mean a massive loss of jobs. Dealerships still have huge services businesses that will continue to thrive.

Re: Kill the laws that keep car dealers in business

#105

Post by shmerl »

nevinera wrote: post #95

I was nodding along until that last part, where it indicated that our best answer was to have the federal government extort states into behaving as they ought.

That's what had to happen with FCC repealing local monopoly protectionist laws which ban ISP competition. How is this any different?

Re: Kill the laws that keep car dealers in business

#106

Post by lsaferite »

jpfr wrote: post #38
nomercy400 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be honest, should it really take months to produce and ship that one car through europe? Surely assembly lines are faster than that.

Assembly lines require a huge investment and cannot scale beyond their maximum capacity. So when a car turns out to be popular, the OEM (the brand that does final assembly) or one of the many suppliers might run into a huge backlog. That is most pronounced when orders spike after the introduction of a new model.

Why would a custom order need more capacity? Either a buy a standard model or I buy a custom model. The assembly line is basically the same, just a few different input parts. The assembly line will be rolling out the same number of cars per day. The difference being my custom order got sent to the factory and the next car started on the line was my car.

Re: Kill the laws that keep car dealers in business

#108

Post by beeboop »

notjoedimaggio wrote: post #63
nomercy400 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shouldn't you have a free market economy? Where a customer is able to choose between a dealer or a direct sale company? The customer is the one that should be able to choose between a cheaper price with a lower service, or a higher price with more service. The problem here is that companies want to provide the cheap alternative but aren't allowed to do so. If a dealer cannot compete with a direct sale company on pric…

I agree in theory, but the reality is that these companies made large investments under one set of legislation. If a society flips and completely changes the economic/legislative landscape under which companies operate, it creates a very unstable business environment and discourages capex especially. This would not be good for the long term economic health.

They made large investments under laws they lobbied for and made by politicians that were paid for. I have no qualms reversing a horrific abuse of lobbying and actions of unethical state congress members. They got to benefit from this farce for decades, it's time to shut it down.

Re: Kill the laws that keep car dealers in business

#109

Post by lsaferite »

adventured wrote: post #40
nomercy400 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be honest, should it really take months to produce and ship that one car through europe? Surely assembly lines are faster than that.

They're much faster than that. Individual cars are produced in under 24 hours time wise across pretty much every major manufacturer. There are other reasons than just manufacturing time, for why a vehicle would take weeks or months to get.

What matters obviously is how many cars can they roll out in a day. Sure, from the time your car starts to the time it rolls out is 24 hours, but how many other cars came out in the same day? If the average daily demand for custom vehicles is significantly higher that the daily production capacity you get long wait times just because the job queue is backed up.

So yes, 'manufacturing time' is likely not the issue, it's 'manufacturing capacity' that will bog you down.

Re: Kill the laws that keep car dealers in business

#110

Post by jonlucc »

coldtea wrote: post #57
bluecalm wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would prefer paying for trying. It's added to the price anyway, it would be more customer friendly to have the fees exposed and not bundled with the purchase itself.

A lot of things people say they would pay for, when speaking to the press or market research etc, in practice they never do -- and obviously not in large numbers. I've read several stories of founders for example hearing people say "I'd buy that" etc, but in practice they found out nobody would bother with their product/service, it solved a non-painful enough problem, etc. Paying for checking out cars to buy seems li…

I see an even bigger problem. Most people hate car salespeople. I hate car shopping and mattresses are even worse because the salespeople's incentives are very unclear and they clearly dick around with people. That perception isn't going to change overnight (and the salespeople's tactics would be tough to change quickly), so I won't pay for it any time soon.
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