Kill the laws that keep car dealers in business • Hacker News Board

Re: Kill the laws that keep car dealers in business

#321

Post by mikeash » Thu, Oct 29, 2015, 3:18 PM UTC

grandalf wrote: post #318

mikeash wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Incentives on used car sales would be redundant, because the incentive gets baked into the price of the used car. A new Tesla gets a $7,500 tax credit when purchased in the US right now. If you turn around and sell it, you'll have to discount it by about $7,500 to account for the fact that you're competing with new cars that have that incentive.

Redundant yes, but nonetheless helpful to the environmental goals of the policy. It's just a subsidy on green products, which would increase demand for green products whether they are new or used.

How would you avoid loopholes, for example getting a free subsidy without doing anything of interest by "selling" your car to a friend and then buying it back from him again?

Re: Kill the laws that keep car dealers in business

#322

Post by coryfklein » Thu, Oct 29, 2015, 6:41 PM UTC

ska wrote: post #180

venning wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. And I didn't mean to sound grim. Markets tend to be efficient in the long-term and inefficient in the short-term as it is still determining how to place capital and whatnot based on new information. I feel like our industry (software, and technology generally) understands that well, even if implicitly. It's just that those "inefficiencies" are often real people and the "short-term" means being unemployed or u…

"short-term" means being unemployed or unemployable for a while. If you add the caveat that "for a while" might in practice equal "several generations" for comparable employment, this is true. See for ex. industrial revolution. The hard truth is that to the degree that these things do work as a simplistic free market model might predict (and that is clearly arguable) they may operate on time scales that will do nothi…

> See for ex. industrial revolution.

I was not aware that the industrial revolution caused unemployment that lasted for generations. Can you provide a link for further study of this?

Re: Kill the laws that keep car dealers in business

#323

Post by 1stop » Sun, Nov 01, 2015, 10:57 AM UTC

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #162

1stop wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that the largest margin for dealerships and car manufacturers is the Aftersales parts/accessories. There is a good reason they exist, it's just that companies like Tesla are offering a different business model of packaged accessories (some other car manufacturers do similar but usually on top of individual accessories not instead of).

> Except that the largest margin for dealerships and car manufacturers is the Aftersales parts/accessories Isn't that always the case? Regardless, cutting out the dealership gives the car companies more margin for this stuff and possibly lower prices for consumers (possibly though probably doubtful).

No, because the manufacturers don't make all the accessories (think window tinting, etc). And the dealerships, which typically become multi-brand dealership groups can get economies of scale the manufacture typically can't.

Re: Kill the laws that keep car dealers in business

#324

Post by alaskamiller » Mon, Nov 02, 2015, 7:10 AM UTC

mikeyouse wrote: post #310

alaskamiller wrote: post #45

This is why Apple will take over the car industry. Integrate the best supply chain management, best logistics, best customization processes, best personalization processes, best servicing processes, best retail sales force, best legal compliance/adherence processes. Then look at how to make a giant iPod on wheels then deploy.

It's interesting that everyone assumes Apple's supply chain is superior to all of the auto companies. When looking at a Cost of Goods Sold basis, all of the big auto companies spend far more money on their products than Apple does (GM's COGS is several tens of billions higher than Apple's) -- and their margins are much smaller, so managing their suppliers and logistics matters much more to the auto companies' bottom…

You assume that a car will always have 30k parts and that Apple doesn't know how to manage more 1k parts.

Remove the combustion engine and its related systems, don't get beholden to legacy, and how many parts will a battery operated car really have?

To an ambitious team backed with plenty of money and expertise this is their dream come true.

Re: Kill the laws that keep car dealers in business

#325

Post by Amezarak » Mon, Nov 02, 2015, 1:45 PM UTC

mikeash wrote: post #247

Amezarak wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Both times I bought a new car, it was because my previous car had been totaled. This would hugely complicate my day-to-day logistics. Is there no way to get a normal car quickly, the same day?

You're always going to pay a premium for getting something fast. For an expensive item like a car, that premium is going to be huge . Sometimes it happens that you need a car immediately. That doesn't mean that you need to buy a car immediately. There are other options. Imagine if your house burned down. You need housing right away. Are you going to say, "I need to buy a new house today "? Of course not. It's a huge…

> You're always going to pay a premium for getting something fast. For an expensive item like a car, that premium is going to be huge.

At least right now in the US, there is no premium for buying a new car in a single day.

> It's a huge purchase that requires a great deal of research and thought. In the unlikely event that you can find something you can move into immediately, you'll have extremely restricted choices and probably pay way more than you needed to.

A car isn't anything like a house. Pretty much every house is different. The location of the house matters and can't be changed. House build quality varies tremendously, requiring in-depth inspections. There's a ton of paperwork to get through, with 24 hour periods on offers and counteroffers common.

Cars come off an assembly line. Every 2015 Honda Civic is like every other 2015 Honda Civic with some minor differences in trim that you can evaluate online or within five minutes of getting into the car at the dealership.

As long as you know what kind of car you want, which you probably already do, there's nothing to "get right". (Although there's things you could do wrong, I suppose: don't walk in and tell the salesman "hey I really need a car asap.")