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Court: Dealers Can’t Stop Tesla From Selling Direct to MA Consumers


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Tesla Motors, the high-performance electric car company headed by PayPal co-founder Elon Musk, has won another legal skirmish in its quest to sell cars directly to consumers.

 

 

On Monday, Massachusetts’ top court ruled that car dealers in the state had no right to sue Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) for its direct-sales model, which cuts out any middlemen in the car-buying process.

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http://www.xconomy.com/boston/2014/09/15/court-dealers-cant-stop-tesla-from-selling-direct-to-ma-consumers/

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That's great for Tesla! In this I have to side with them, consumers should have a choice of what kind of experience they want when purchasing a new vehicle and for a state to side with the dealerships against a new, innovative company like Tesla is basically like a teacher taking the side of the bully. So what if Tesla want's to do things differently, I doubt Tesla is going to make that much of an impact on the local dealerships. Their cars are expensive and as a dealership, if you want to compete, then all you have to do is push your car company's hybrids and electric models more. That's how you compete, not by trying to force the state to ban the competitions methods.
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I agree they should be able to sell the cars directly as I believe in free markets. Downsides in a free market can come of this as well. If tesla ever does churn out cars for the average consumer and there numbers begin to rise they may want dealerships. And the dealerships could tell them to F off at that point.
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I agree they should be able to sell the cars directly as I believe in free markets. Downsides in a free market can come of this as well. If tesla ever does churn out cars for the average consumer and there numbers begin to rise they may want dealerships. And the dealerships could tell them to F off at that point.

 

Or at that point, maybe they'll look into their own dealer network.

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  • 1 month later...

The problem with no middleman is of course that there exists no intermediate party to work on your behalf if there is a problem with the product. Who will work on your car in the event of a problem? Who will go to bat for you if the manufacturer doesn't want to cover something?

 

I've had good dealers help resolve issues that I would have had to pay for out of pocket. So while the dealer model of sales, distribution, and service is nor always perfect it does serve a purpose.

 

Tesla is small enough now, and has a wealthy enough clientele (and price on cars) that they don't need a wide ranging ability to service a lot of vehicles all over the place. Once that changes, watch them change their tune.

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