> The law lets electric-only manufacturers like Tesla sell directly, but older companies’ electric cars must go through dealerships.<p>Talk about an unlevel playing field. If EVs are to be incentivized, direct sales should be allowed for all EVs from any manufacturer.
Can I hate all sides in this? Car manufacturers have a huge information asymmetry with end-users, which leads to ugliness like in-car tracking systems that insurers love. But dealers capture most of that information asymmetry because they can learn the tricks and people don't buy cars very often.
Yes, I want to pay a middle-man dealer for literally nothing other than some perceived right to screw me buying a car at a MSRP price plus "market adjustment" because they can!<p>If dealers won't sell at MSRP as good enough, it should be redefined as something that is beholden to only their greed, but not simply legitimized by dealers that feel entitled to get over on me adding to the legal price.<p>Dealerships are now akin to legalized scalping like StubHub and Ticketmaster adding superfluous charges and fees, and I will purposefully try not to deal with them ever again. Dealer licenses should be revoked for doing this, not endorsed and supported.
The fact that the dealership lobby is having to push for laws to protect their business means they are seeing the writing on the wall: the car dealership model will soon become just another (unpleasant) relic from the past.<p>Baby Boomers and GenX both like the idea of being sold something and having that service provided, but Millennials and GenZ have consistently shown that we greatly value self-service, straightforward pricing, and not wasting time or money on feeding the “fat” in systems.<p>Car dealerships are a major reason why new vehicles are so expensive now, with automobile pricing far outpacing inflation or any other metric.<p>In what other industry, not using the dealership model, would we be ok with major purchases being gate-kept by an army of middlemen who’s job is to grift off of every sale, obfuscating the price, are trained in deception, and their employer will also try to sell you financing, service place, and other crazy shit that people are not informed about? At least in retail you can shop around and find the best price and margins are well understood.
What a fascinating example of what we can expect from DeSantis should he become president.<p>You do him favors, like give him a platform to announce his presidency run, and you get laws passed that are clearly designed to help your company beat your competitors.<p>There's nothing sly or secretive about it. He's making a statement here to all the big companies: "those who help me win will get rewarded for it".<p>Edit later: Sorry all, feel free to disregard this and/or down vote it. Not because you agree or disagree but because this isn't the right place for this kind of snarkiness.