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Florida has prohibited direct to consumer sales for over half a century with an especially stringent automobile dealer franchise law. The interesting point is the carve-out for Tesla.
We now know why he hosted DeSantis's presidential election campaign opener.
Looks like from some of these replies that the Reddit folks made their way to HN.
This thread involves both politics and Musk/Tesla, a cross-section of categories that often invites low-quality comments. It need only add cryptocurrency to achieve the trifecta.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> because cars require service, someone needs to do that service, be trained and have master techs on that service. My cars have had no trouble getting service at independent mechanics. > How do you handle lemon laws without dealerships? The same way we handle them with dealerships? The organization that sold you the car is responsible for the fixes, or refunding the vehicle if it can't be fixed.
> My cars have had no trouble getting service at independent mechanics. Have you ever worked at an indy? We rely heavily on dealerships for anything from borrowing specialty tooling, local parts departments, knowledge and advise etc. > The organization that sold you the car is responsible for the fixes, or refunding the vehicle if it can't be fixed. Totally. I think it's six of one half a dozen of the other. Car manu…
What makes it impossible for the manufacturer to provide such things?
If Ford chose to do away with dealerships, they couldn't provide regional parts and training facilities? (Hell, they'd probably already need to buy out a dealership or two for every major city or region already, anyways.)
The auto dealership lobby is one of the most powerful in America. It leans heavily Republican, and Republicans dutifully propose legislations which protect these wealthy -- but almost wholly unnecessary -- middlemen. Slate had an expose [1] recently about them that is very enlightening. [1] https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/05/rich-republicans...
If it’s only Republicans why is it that heavily Democratic states like CA or NY also require dealerships in most cases? (CA is slightly better than NY but still doesn’t allow direct sales for 90% of vehicles)
Someone posted the other day about the (likely apocryphal) story of a California statesman who struggled to find a place to live in SF because of high rents and his limited resources. 10-15 years later that same politician is a multi-millionaire while making less than most starting engineers in SF and with none of the equity. It’s astounding how wealthy people get after becoming “public servants.” Ugh.
> The attempt by auto manufacturers to cut out the dealer would only result in higher prices and less customer service to the public,” he said. “The new car dealer is the customer’s advocate when it comes to warranty work and service on a manufacturer’s product, and this bill will protect that So this is the reason given in the article, but what are good reasons, if any, to prevent direct-to-customer sales? I haven't…
Many of the laws about warranties were due to poor behavior of manufacturers. In the US, repair parts need to be available for at least 10 years for cars. In the past, the manufacturer could just decide that they didn't want to sell repair parts - just buy a new car.
The Great Depression reduced the number of car manufacturers by about 95%. Which brings me to a more important point. A number of laws were passed to prevent the Great Depression from happening again. Repealing several of them gave us the 2008 financial crisis. Making exceptions to the Securities Acts of the 1930s lets us all relearn the history of why those laws were passed in the first place with all the crypto scams. These laws exist for a very good reason and repealing them is only good for con artists and crooks. The rest of us get screwed.
Modern car dealerships in America are the embodiment of modern rent-seeking. Every department treats every other department as the enemy. Each department that touches an item (spare part, used car, tires, floormats, whatever) has to raise the price 30% to cover overhead and the need to be a profit center. Sears went through this exact same behavior as it crashed and burned. Jack Walsh used the same behaviors to make General Electric the darling of Wall Street.
> tried to push every useless feature or additional warranty that they could.
Every sales rep that works on commission works this way. Salaried sales reps don't. Any commissioned sales rep that refuses to work this way ends up quitting very very quickly.
Disclaimer: I used to work for General Motors which used to be the largest car manufacturer and the very reason that many of the dealership & warranty laws were passed in the first place.
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Florida also recently passed a special law for SpaceX removing liability for launch related deaths of employees or something. A few weeks after the flight termination system failed for 40 seconds.
Do you think Elon Musk turned into a hardcore Republican just for the political favors? It just seems so blatant. There has to be some kind of conflict of interest here. Elon was literally blasting out the DeSantis presidential announcement to his millions of Twitter followers, and he continues to act as a mouthpiece for Republican ideology.
What happened to Republicans and small government?
I buy that dealerships are paying off state government officials as part of their lobbying efforts. Putting on my cynic hat, my question is, why aren't automakers? I mean, other than Tesla, Rivian, and Lucid, who presumably have no dealership footprint to protect. I know Ford also wants to sell direct-to-consumer, and I have no doubt they've got no ethical issue with lobbying politicians. So, why not shell out a few…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> My cars have had no trouble getting service at independent mechanics. Have you ever worked at an indy? We rely heavily on dealerships for anything from borrowing specialty tooling, local parts departments, knowledge and advise etc. > The organization that sold you the car is responsible for the fixes, or refunding the vehicle if it can't be fixed. Totally. I think it's six of one half a dozen of the other. Car manu…
> We rely heavily on dealerships for anything from borrowing specialty tooling, local parts departments, knowledge and advise etc. What makes it impossible for the manufacturer to provide such things? If Ford chose to do away with dealerships, they couldn't provide regional parts and training facilities? (Hell, they'd probably already need to buy out a dealership or two for every major city or region already, anyways…
> The attempt by auto manufacturers to cut out the dealer would only result in higher prices and less customer service to the public,” he said. “The new car dealer is the customer’s advocate when it comes to warranty work and service on a manufacturer’s product, and this bill will protect that So this is the reason given in the article, but what are good reasons, if any, to prevent direct-to-customer sales? I haven't…
It's complete bullshit. I despise both car dealerships and realtors. They exist to service themselves.
Around here, a lot of properties get listed and sold by the local law office. Granted, they don't put in the same kind of marketing effort that Realtors generally do, but when the market is hot buyers will search high and low to find your property for sale anyway.
Unless the market is weak and one needs someone working 24/7 to find a buyer, going straight to a lawyer to sell a property/buy a property is a no-brainer. You are going to need one anyway.