u/Fightmebr0

When original legal battles happened between Tesla and dealers happen traditional OEMs needed to pick a side.

1. Side with dealers and try and block a new competitor from having an advantage.

2. Side with Tesla and piss off your franchised dealers.

3. Stay out of it

All of the foreign brands and Stellantis initially stayed out of it

While many executives at GM and Ford privately admitted to wanting to side with Tesla they did end up trying to fight Tesla as part of a "raising rivals" strategy. If you can make your competitor costs go up you have an easier shot of competiting with them.

Just so we are explicit here GM wrote a letter to the governor of Ohio stating "Tesla would gain a distinct competitve advantage by avoiding restrictions that all other auto manufacturers make in Ohio". They know franchised dealers raise costs and want to avoid someone being able to out compete them with a more efficient business model.

The laws that got implemented carved out Tesla or new players in part because some OEMs opposed Tesla's efforts. Now they are at a major disadvantage for the future of the auto industry while Tesla and other startups have a clear legal advantage.

They will need to relitigate this whole direct to consumer issue but now be on the opposite side they originally advocated for. New EV companies won't help them since they benefit from only new players being able to sell DTC. A real mess for them.

They should have just supported the pro consumer position from the beginning. Dealers would have complained but they complain about everything.

Michigan law stated "a manufacturer shall not ... sell any new vehicle to a retail customer other than through its franchised dealers". It was ambiguous if it applied to Tesla since they never had franchised dealers. In Massachutes a similiar legal dispute was settled by looking at the historical context of the law and sided with Tesla.

In both Michigan and Massachutes the direct to consumer laws were designed to protect franchised dealers from OEMs. They were not designed to apply to OEMs without franchises. As much as dealer folks try and rewrite that history, the franchise laws were never about consumers or the market, it was always about protecting franchises from OEMs.

In an unrelated bill, Senator Joe Hune snuck in an admendment crossing out the word "its" in the bill to secretly ban direct to consumer car sales for all. Never mind he got campaign contributions from dealers or that his wife worked as a lobbiest for auto dealers... It was under the guise of cleaning up the language.

When the admendment sponser was asked directly if this change was for Tesla they said it was not. Members of the legislature say they had no idea they were voting on Tesla.

There ya go. That's how you pass a law that harms consumers and makes no economical sense. You trick people. Sometimes you trick people with bad economic theory. Sometimes you trick them with lieing about the historical context of the laws. Sometimes you trick people with wording changes.

This buying today mentality may work if you wanna sell someone a car that works like your old car. How often do we hear about "unserious" buyers being time wasters and you shouldn't look until you are ready to buy?

If you wanna switch people over to a competly new paradigm they need time.

Dealers think someone walking out is a missed sale and that means they aren't gonna make money. That mentality is incompatible with EV sales.

The idea of someone going to a dealer and not buying 5 times is probably making all the salesmen here blood boil but its what needed to electrify America. Cool if you don't wanna sell EVs fine, but stop preventing someone else who does want to do it from doing it.

Gas cars can get away with no direct to consumer because they have literally no alternative.

Direct to consumer is dominating the ev market now. The future is bright with dtc as Lucid and Rivian all look to launch more affordable smaller cars.

The traditional oems will either need to exit the ev market or sell dtc to actually compete.

https://michigan.law.umich.edu/news/5qs-cranes-new-book-chronicles-fight-between-tesla-and-auto-dealers

By a prominent anti trust law scholar.

The more you learn about dealerships the worse they appear.

Originally nada losers had the bill at 500 dollar doc fees then they lowered it to a max of 265. Still far too high. At 85 dollars its already a solid profit stream for the dealers.

We don't need to put up with this shit as a society. Dealers didn't close in California because this bill got vetoed. They just wanted to profit more by paying off politicans at the expense of working people.

Affordability is the number one talking point in politics. Now is the time to tell our politicians how we can make cars more affordable. Dealers political power is waning. They have no allies. A good start is a nationwide cap on doc fees at 100.

Franchised dealers are not like other franchises. Franchised dealers lobbied the government to make the oems have very little power to deal with bad dealers.

A McDonalds that is causing harm to the brand can be shut down. Dealers lobbied for laws that often require disciplinary action to go through dealer boards which are ran by effectively dealers. These laws go above and beyond what any business would ever agree.

Don't listen to people who want to get rid of the csi score. They want complete power to do what they want with no consequences.

We are all paying for this anticompetitve legislation.

Source

https://www.jstor.org/stable/725228?seq=30

EVs seem to be changing this dynamic because of how ineffective dealers are at selling them.

“In the United States it’s not an easy question. We have this horrific state-by-state level of rules that are as close as you can get to corruption,” said Scaringe in a story recently published by InsideEVs. “I think you essentially have, like, lots of dealers have paid for laws that make it really hard for us to interact directly with the consumer.”

Where do you get off on trying to tell someone who has never and never will have a franchise agreement how to run their business?

Just saw a couple huge investments into businesses with direct to consumer models.

Slate

https://techcrunch.com/2026/04/13/slate-auto-raises-650m-to-fund-its-affordable-ev-truck-plans/

Lucid

https://ir.lucidmotors.com/news-releases/news-release-details/lucid-receive-new-investments-pif-and-uber-uber-and-lucid-expand

Smart money knows. They see the future is dtc not dino nepo babies.

Traditional OEMs will have two choices either sell direct to consumer or remain uncompetitive in the EV market. Volkswagen knows that to compete in the EV market its dtc or bust. Soon others will be following.

NADA and dealer folks here would lead you to believe franchised dealers are necessary for service networks to be built out.

While at the same time NADA and dealers consistently oppose allowing independent repair shops to perform the same kind of work through opposing right to repair.

https://www.nada.org/legislative/oppose-so-called-right-repair-legislation-hr-1566s-1379

So to clear this up NADA says dealers are needed to ensure we can repair our cars while opposing legalization that would empower independent service shops to fix our cars.

Its called regulatory capture. Fuck over the consumers to make a buck.

The sad thing here is people fall for these "arguments".

No its not a fair comparison to argue that Rivian has less service coverage than Toyota. Of course it does. Over time the coverage will increase. Brands are already innovating with mobile service techs and Id love to see that continued.

To be clear the choice we are making is between allowing new car manufacturers which will have poor service coverage or not allowing new car manufacturers at all. Dealers want the no new car manufacturer option but if we want to have a healthy car market we need to allow new competitors to enter the market.

Let consumers make the choice if they are ok with poor service coverage