Tesla's fight with America's car dealers • Hacker News Board

Re: Tesla's fight with America's car dealers

#41

Post by jonknee » Mon, May 20, 2013, 10:01 PM UTC

Daniel_Newby wrote: post #13

jonknee wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Texas likes to boast about smaller government and more personal freedom. Except with cars apparently. If the tea party were a state it would be Texas and Austin would be forced out.

> If the tea party were a state it would be Texas ... You appear to have internalized the meme that Tea Party is a synonym for Country Club Republican. This is probably not accurate.

No, the tea party as a group lines up with Texas on immigration, guns, taxes, gays, science, religion, etc etc. Country Club Republicans stay in the enclaves.

Re: Tesla's fight with America's car dealers

#42

Post by jonknee » Mon, May 20, 2013, 10:05 PM UTC

theevocater wrote: post #20

cobrausn wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Austin is not near as special and 'weird' as it thinks it is. I say this living in the largest city in the U.S. with a gay mayor, also located in Texas. You know nothing jon knee.

Yeah Houston (I'm assuming you are talking about Houston) is a really progressive place. I do love Austin (its a young city and I'm a young person) but its not some shining light in the center of Texas. It's really not that different than any other big city in Texas.

Houston was just about split in the last election (Obama won Harris County by 585 votes). Austin went heavy for Obama (60.2% to 36.2% or just under 100k votes). Houston has quite a ways to go before being liberal. The hispanic vote makes Texas as a whole pretty interesting though.

Re: Tesla's fight with America's car dealers

#43

Post by [deleted] » Mon, May 20, 2013, 10:07 PM UTC

blhack wrote: post #33

maeon3 wrote: post #9

Will Elon Musk fold under the pressure and cooperate with the dealer network when they offer to sell at low to no markup to bring him into the extortion racket of Car Dealers? I loathe buying cars so much because of the snakes that run those Dealerships. They want the car buying process to be so excruciatingly painful so people will leave money on the table to "Just take my money and make the pain go away". How far a…

Go to carmax. full disclosure: I work in the automotive industry. (Although not for them)

[deleted]

Re: Tesla's fight with America's car dealers

#44

Post by rthomas6 » Mon, May 20, 2013, 10:08 PM UTC

msluyter wrote: post #18

maeon3 wrote: post #9

Will Elon Musk fold under the pressure and cooperate with the dealer network when they offer to sell at low to no markup to bring him into the extortion racket of Car Dealers? I loathe buying cars so much because of the snakes that run those Dealerships. They want the car buying process to be so excruciatingly painful so people will leave money on the table to "Just take my money and make the pain go away". How far a…

They want the car buying process to be so excruciatingly painful so people will leave money on the table to "Just take my money and make the pain go away". Well, this is why I bought my last car used from Carmax. Sure, you probably spend more than you you might spend if you were willing to go to a dealer and haggle, but I found it to be worth the premium.

I don't understand this unless you have absolutely zero tolerance for negotiating a price. Why could I not simply print out a Carmax price of a used car in which I'm interested, then take it to any other used car dealer with a comparable car?

"Can you beat this price?"

"Yes." --> I just beat the Carmax price.

"No." --> I leave with my money (this one won't happen).

Re: Tesla's fight with America's car dealers

#45

Post by nknighthb » Mon, May 20, 2013, 10:12 PM UTC

rthomas6 wrote: post #44

msluyter wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They want the car buying process to be so excruciatingly painful so people will leave money on the table to "Just take my money and make the pain go away". Well, this is why I bought my last car used from Carmax. Sure, you probably spend more than you you might spend if you were willing to go to a dealer and haggle, but I found it to be worth the premium.

I don't understand this unless you have absolutely zero tolerance for negotiating a price. Why could I not simply print out a Carmax price of a used car in which I'm interested, then take it to any other used car dealer with a comparable car? "Can you beat this price?" "Yes." --> I just beat the Carmax price. "No." --> I leave with my money (this one won't happen).

Car dealers are genetically incapable of giving such a direct answer. You can either deal with their evasive swindling and haggle anyway, or just assume the answer is "no".

Re: Tesla's fight with America's car dealers

#46

Post by jared314 » Mon, May 20, 2013, 10:15 PM UTC

axus wrote: post #6

The article brought up the point that Tesla owns all of the service centers. I don't care if Tesla owns all the dealers, but having a monopoly on Tesla repair would be bad for consumers. If the process for becoming a "Tesla mechanic" allowed competition with the Tesla service centers, that would be OK.

It might matter later in Tesla's life, when they have a larger number of cars on the road (3 to 5 years), but right now Tesla is the only one who can ensure the quality of the customer experience. Ensuring a good customer experience, right now, will sell more cars than lowering the cost of maintenance.

Re: Tesla's fight with America's car dealers

#47

Post by schiffern » Mon, May 20, 2013, 10:17 PM UTC

Shivetya wrote: post #40

atourgates wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do the provisions of the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act, which basically say you can get your car serviced anywhere you want without voiding your manufacturers' warranty, not apply to Teslas?

Going to have to wait for an owner to challenge it, or repair shop which tries to obtain the necessary technical information to do so. disclaimer, I work a major auto parts supplier, etc. It will be very very interesting to see if tries to circumvent this law, which I doubt he can. If anything shuts down his expansion it may be through this route. As in, they may force them to curtail selling until they can provide t…

>they may force them to curtail selling until they can provide the independent support.

Wouldn't that just be the same manuals, training videos, and parts-ordering-system credentials that they give to their own mechanics?

Re: Tesla's fight with America's car dealers

#48

Post by darkarmani » Mon, May 20, 2013, 10:29 PM UTC

jack-r-abbit wrote: post #10

> Until then, said O'Connell, Tesla will sell its cars the way it wants. If some states don't allow that, then Tesla will simply sell them elsewhere. I think this last line of the article is very important. This has the power to get the consumer on Tesla's side of this fight. If enough of the right people in Texas (and other problem states) want this car and think the laws are stupid... they'll need to find a way to…

> If enough of the right people in Texas... they'll just get them out of state.

It's very unfortunate that the state is Texas and not a state like Rhode Island. They (dealers) have 15 hours of protection in Texas.

Re: Tesla's fight with America's car dealers

#49

Post by darkarmani » Mon, May 20, 2013, 10:34 PM UTC

> The traditional dealer franchise system is best for car buyers, Wolters insists, because it preserves competition between dealerships selling the same products.

I'm not sure I understand this argument. If I follow this argument to completion, what they are basically saying is that when you have lots of middlemen selling the same product, that "preserves" competition between them, limiting the amount of additional cost they add. Wouldn't removing the middleman also remove that additional cost?

Re: Tesla's fight with America's car dealers

#50

Post by rubinelli » Mon, May 20, 2013, 10:46 PM UTC

gnoway wrote: post #29

bdclimber14 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To your latter point, it's certainly possible. You could replace "Ford or GM" with a large 90s computer manufacturer, e.g. HP, but Apple eventually decided they wanted to via Apple stores.

I don't know that Apple is a good model. They have high volume of relatively inexpensive gadgets that they've managed to convince people should not last very long. The lifetime and service expectations of a car are completely different. If I bought a car and the battery went dead, and the manufacturer's solution was 'ship it to us and we'll send you a replacement in x days' that would be a unacceptable. Likewise, peo…

I'm not convinced. When I had to do anything more serious than basic maintenance, the answer has frequently been "we'll order a replacement part, it should arrive in x days."