Big surprise, in a state where you're not even allowed to pump your own gas. If they did allow Tesla sales, you'd have to hire someone to plug it in for you. Electricity is dangerous, dontchaknow.
The reality is, you can usually pump your own gas without the attendants giving you a problem. They may come over and take-over the pumping after you've gotten it started - but I've never has any of them get upset at me for taking the initiative.
Think of how much better the roads would (well, could) be if the mandatory cost of the attendant was deferred into additional tax revenue, while gas remains dirt-cheap.
After spending 6 months there for an internship, I'd have to agree. Even the roads you explicitly pay for with tolls are crap. My car will never be the same again.
Having lived in Oregon (where motorists are put on a pedestal and actually served by gas station attendants) and then California, I don't understand the masses clamoring to pump their own gas. Is this supposed to be a privilege, getting out of the car in potentially inclement weather and messing around with flammable liquids?
It's nothing but the broken-window fallacy in action. If I didn't want to pump my own gas, I'd pull into a full-service lane instead of a self-service one... but the market has pretty much spoken on that issue. I don't know where I'd even find a full-service lane anymore. There is almost no demand for it in the absence of coercion.
(Yeah, yeah, I know, I should STFU and move to Somalia...)
Smoke-free businesses are a gray area, because we're talking about an addictive substance. Businesses that refuse to serve tobacco addicts are at a disadvantage that apparently can't be overcome by additional patronage from customers seeking a smoke-free environment. So the government steps in, in the name of public health. I don't agree with these laws 100%, but I can see the argument behind them.
Full-service gas stations, on the other hand, are neither prohibited nor mandated in most states. They would exist if there was a market. There's not. End of story.
I would rather not pay someone (in the form of higher gas prices) to do something that takes nearly no effort, and I can damn well do myself. Who is so lazy at they can't get out of their comfy seat for 2 minutes?
> I would rather not pay someone (in the form of higher gas prices) to do something that takes nearly no effort
Then you'd be happy to know that in addition to having full service, Oregon's gas prices are ~$.40 per gallon cheaper than California's. Full service doesn't seem to be resulting in dramatically higher prices.
> Who is so lazy at they can't get out of their comfy seat for 2 minutes?
Who doesn't have better things to do with their time than inhale gasoline fumes?
That additional cost is probably gas tax, so instead of going towards paying a group of people to waste their time doing something trivial, that money is going to pay for freeway maintenance, etc.
California's gas tax is ~$.70 per gallon, Oregon is ~$.50. Now granted, California has roughly 3x the miles of roadway that Oregon has...[1] This probably explains why California's roads are atrociously bad and Oregon's are relatively pristine.
The difference isn't just in taxes. California has an artificially restricted supply of gasoline because it requires a specific formula (ostensibly to reduce emissions) and only six or seven refineries are equipped to meet that regulation.
Oregon's standards allow it to buy from a far larger market.
This is actually one area where the refining industry wants federal regulation: they would vastly prefer to deal with a single set of standards for the whole country than tailoring individual plants to 50 different standards.
It does. Just at a very basic level they're reducing the amount of smog-producing particulates and toxins such as benzene in the typical gallon of gas. Obviously, a reduction in those constituents is going to affect their ratios in the combustion products, it's like reducing the number of moles on the left side of a balanced chemical equation. The moles on the right are going to drop because there's less material.
I thought you were going to say: "instead of paying a local working human being providing a decent service, that money goes down the government rathole".
It's not a decent service, though. It's a service not many want to pay extra for. Personally I would even pay a bit extra to be able to pump my own gas. It certainly doesn't save me any time to have them pump it for me, and it's awkward to boot.
There's no shortage of things they could be doing, but instead, we're paying them to stand around most of the time inhaling gasoline fumes. We could instead be paying those people to do something actually useful, like running fiber to homes and businesses, or delivering goods so that we don't have to travel, or a million other things that would increase our productivity.
> Then you'd be happy to know that in addition to having full service, Oregon's gas prices are ~$.40 per gallon cheaper than California's. Full service doens't seem to be resulting in dramatically higher prices.
And now you're being willfully ignorant. California has a variety of other regulations that lead to higher prices. But that doesn't change the fact that Oregon's gas-pumping regulation also leads to higher gas prices.
That is not a fair comparison. California's gas tax (including excise tax) is higher than Oregon. In addition, California requires a more expensive blend of gasoline. A better comparison would be to a state that has similar taxes and gasoline requirements. As a bonus, the availability of refineries is a significant factor in gasoline prices.
I live just over the Washington border in the eastern part of the state and go to Oregon frequently. Same situation as you've found compared to California - Oregon is normally $0.10 or so cheaper per gallon. Often the attendants will wipe your windshield, check your wipers, tell you the sports score and weather, etc. It's rather charming really. Even when I was in Portland on business, I don't think I ever viewed it as taking any longer for the attendant to do it over what it would have taken me. If you really want to do it yourself, you can get a commercial fuel membership and pump away at those stations.
It's not about the convenience of staying in your car. It's about the cronyist/protectionist attitude of not letting different business models have an opportunity to serve consumers with various price and service mixes.
The weather in California is rarely, if ever, inclement enough to make it a bother to get out of the car to pump gas. Most of the time it's quite pleasant, as you get 45 seconds to take in the clear blue sky, starry night, or gorgeous sunset.
Weird, I live in IA. I've never heard that there are states where gas cannot be pumped by the customer. Weather? All gas stations I've seen have an open pavilion/roof over all of the pumps. Flammable liquids? Unless you are smoking while pumping your gas, there's a pretty low risk of explosion or fire. There are cases of static electricity igniting the gas but that's rare. Normally the non-conductive handle protects against that very well.
It seems that it would actually be less convenient to have to wait for an attendant, especially when the station is busy. Unlike service from behind the checkout counter, the attendant must walk around to each car...at least twice I'm assuming...to start and stop the fuel? I'm not familiar with it.
If you lived here you'd understand. NJ people are just like NY they have no time to get out of their car & deal with that bull, especially with bad weather an entire season. We also have the refineries here & we get cheaper gas almost always as a result. It's been challenged MANY times but the damn GOP old folks don't want to get it go.
> Big surprise, in a state where you're not even allowed to pump your own gas.
I'm afraid I don't understand this bit (being European and all). Are you saying that not only there are attendants, but that you are forbidden from using the pump if an attendant is not available?
This is surreal. In western Europe, you'll find somebody manning a shop next to the pumps, if there is one, and you may have to pay for gas inside the shop, but most pumps take credit cards. I think any lawmaker suggesting that an attendant be made mandatory would be cause for much hilarity. I understand that this is a way for the state to provide jobs artificially, but it's definitely a different way of operating.
> I don't understand the objection to laws against cooking for yourself at home.
If it was cheaper to hire a Chef to cook meals, I wouldn't understand all the noise about making it mandatory either.
Bad analogy. If you want ammunition, I'll give you the following. Having an attendant pump your gas sucks because:
1. They screw up what type of fuel you want. Or how much of it.
2. When you yell at them to fix it, they have no idea what you're saying, because they don't speak English.
3. At a busy station, you have to wait for five minutes for them to even get to you.
4. And then you have to wait for another five minutes for them to come back and finish off.
5. If you have the tag you use to pay for gas on your keys ... well you have to hand your keys to a stranger. Same with a credit card, when you could have simply swiped yourself.
I can go on, but really, at the end of the day, this isn't a big deal. There are far worse things to complain about.
But my point is that it is indeed cheaper to hire a chef to cook meals -- in some cases, but that doesn't justify making it mandatory.
You're taking, as given, the claim that attended fuel pumping is cheaper -- but that's only true sometimes, just like with the home chef, especially if (as in my ignorant aristocrat example) you factor in opportunity costs, which was the point.
When people insist that attended fuel is cheaper in terms of sticker price ... well, that's dubious, but let's assume, for whatever reason, it is (maybe there are insurance savings?). It still has a higher opportunity cost for several reasons, many of which you just listed.
Not a single country from Mexico to Argentina lets you pump your own gas.
When I got back from my 2 year Alaska->Argentina drive I genuinely had to stop and think about what I was doing, unsure of how to proceed. It was a great novelty :)
I'm prepared to entertain a defense of a ban on direct-to-consumer auto sales but have not yet seen a compelling one. Did such a ban make sense in the past?
Dealerships generally have exclusive rights to a region. In a state with these laws, this exclusivity may have been implicit rather than explicitly in the contract, which does make things tricky.
I could sorta see that at car price points there could be some structural advantages for the manufacturers over the dealers that might benefit from some protection. But it does seem like little more than local political power here in 2014 USA.
If the law were changed overnight so the manufactures could sell direct, then I would expect the number of surviving dealerships to be very low. I would imagine it would be dealers in used and exotic cars that survive or rural areas that do multiple manufactures.
It is a local power thing, and I don't agree with it, but I also don't think anyone should get an unfair advantage just because they are new. That doesn't promote competition.
In the past it wasn't a ban so much as an enabling law that allowed car dealer franchises to exist. Car makers had a sordid history of letting car dealers dip their toes in the water and then swooping in once the first unlucky souls had proven the viability of a market.
You've got to wonder why, once this sordid history had become well known, prospective franchisees didn't start to insist on non-compete clauses in their contracts.
I can understand things like the Three Tier System for alcohol because that is an addictive substance that can cause serious harm if improperly used. But why is this same logic in any way applicable to automobiles? They want to impose a required distribution layer between the manufacturers and the consumer. Enforced middlemen.
Imagine if that applied to the startup world: "Oh hey, you want to buy this SaaS product I built? Well, you can't sign up on my site, you'll have to buy from one of my SaaS distributors."
Franchise law has a long history built around some truly abusive things done by the manufacturer/parent company.
I don't think this is going to be a big deal. If you own a fleet of cars (think rental car company), you can't technically buy from a manufacturer, but the standard loophole is the negotiations happen with the manufacturer, and the local dealer is the official seller and the dealer gets something like $75/car. Tesla should have no problem setting up a similar arrangement.
Have you ever shopped for high-end routers, like Juniper or Fortigate? For some reason they absolutely refuse to sell directly, and force you to go through one of those stupid resellers that don't even understand the product they're reselling. Ask the resellers any non-trivial questions, and they forward it back to their contact at the main company.
There's a relationship management issue there somewhere - supporting one-off small volume sales has a definite cost at some point - someone needs to process and fill the order. Limiting sales to "big" customers means you can spend less time dealing with all the order processes and focus more on a decent product (or decent profits, wherever the focus may lie)
That was my first thought, too, but here's how my exchange went:
1. Contact fortigate, they put a sales guy in touch with you. Ask him some tech questions, turns out he doesn't know anything. He gets a tech manager in the loop. Ask him, he doesn't know shit either, he gets one of his subordinates in the loop. Now there's 3 cc's on the email thread, and maybe they can tell you some details about the product.
2. They put you in touch with a reseller. A "relationship manager" at the reseller puts you in touch with a sales guy at the reseller. That sales guy tells you that you need a higher-end product than the one you expected, for twice as much money. You start questioning that, turns out he doesn't know much about the product and says "let me get fortigate back in on this" and pulls the 3 people from step 1 back into the email thread.
3. Now there's 5 people in the loop, with several of them arguing about what you need. Eventually it gets sorted, and the reseller ships you the thing you told them you needed a week ago.
.. all of this was to sell me about $4000 worth of hardware, total.
Now I'd understand their thinking if the reseller would just handle the customer relationship, but they had to pull fortigate back into it every time I asked a non-trivial pre-sales question, the kind any sysadmin would ask. Makes me wonder what all those "relationship managers" and sales guys are for.
How often do sysadmins actually make the call on what gets bought? For a purchasing dept, they'd probably stop at step 2, get the over-priced product and everyone's happy.
The re-seller is obviously the under-performing part of your exchange, it should be their business to know what they are selling. Most likely it shows the current state of the market - not very many buyers ask these technical questions, hence the experience is not there for the reseller. If you'd want to feel better about it, at least the reseller you've dealt with now has some more knowledge of one of the products they are selling.
> Have you ever shopped for high-end routers, like Juniper or Fortigate?
A lot of people don't understand that this isn't just high-end routers. It's actually all electronics.
Try to buy a motherboard directly from the manufacturer, or a monitor, or really, anything else.
The manufacturer will direct you to their sales wing, at which point, you will be instructed to buy from their approved distributors. Those distributors are large companies that work as middle men.
And then even those distributors will not sell their goods to you unless you have a reseller license and go through their application process.
I wouldn't have minded if the distributor was newegg or something, like it is for motherboards. But all these router resellers are really stupid "solution providers" filled with "customer relationship managers" who can't actually answer detailed questions about the product, and don't seem to do much of anything other than draw a salary that inflates the final price.
It's one thing when it's voluntary. The electronics manufacturers work with resellers because they want to. It's a completely different thing when the law requires it.
What that does it vastly simplify the logistics for the manufacturers. If you could order directly from them they'd have to hire sales people or people to run their web store, shippers to pack and ship individual components instead of just palletizing everything, and then have to deal with the laws of each customer's country about taxes. It's much simpler for them and more efficient on their end to just sell to a middleman.
> It's much simpler for them and more efficient on their end to just sell to a middleman.
In that case, Dell, Apple, Sony, and Microsoft must be morons. Because they sell directly to consumers.
It's not about simplicity or efficiency. It's much more efficient to sell directly to the consumer. It just takes an immense amount of resources that smaller manufacturers simply do not have. That's why medium/small sized manufacturers rely on larger middle men and retailers. Not because it's more efficient, but because they simply don't have a choice in the matter. They don't have the resources to go directly to the consumer.
Your example companies are working at huge scales compared to most companies that go through distributors. The big difference there is that those companies are selling consumer goods. Many companies that deal exclusively through distributors are selling to businesses, it's a much different environment. When you're working at a huge volume the difference in price makes a much larger impact than if you're selling to a smaller number of companies and the cost of setting up the handlers is dwarfed.
> It just takes an immense amount of resources that smaller manufacturers simply do not have.
Requiring less resources is a form of efficiency for the manufacturer. Being able to simply ship to a single distributor vs shipping to many individuals and having the infrastructure to process those packages, is more efficient to the small manufacturers. It may not be on the wider economic scale but for small companies it saves a lot of work.
Direct sales should be opened up to all car manufacturers not just Tesla. Tesla is no exception, if GM isn't allowed to do direct sale Tesla shouldn't be able to as well.
Rather than worry about whether Tesla is doing something that GM can't, you should be focusing on why Tesla is being stopped for doing this in the first place.
It's in the interest of protecting jobs of automotive dealers in an industry Tesla is disrupting. Nothing more.
The power to regulate commerce at the appropriate level (in a federal system; in non-federal systems this distinction is meaningless), which has been a traditional power of government since the dawn of history.
It's pretty sad when you're not allowed to sell your product to your customer. If car dealerships provide such a valuable service then they should survive on their own merits and not have to exist parasitically through legislation.
Go read the Supreme Court's ruling in Raich. Upshot: they ruled a violent raid on a terminally ill old lady's home was legal because her home-grown state-legal doctor-monitored half-dozen pot plants decreased demand for illegal interstate commerce.
If they want something illegal, they'll torture the law until it agrees.
While I agree that selling something as straightforward as cars need not have a middle-man, I could see how some industries might want a gatekeeper such as pharmacists.
I don't disagree with the first part, I do disagree strongly with the "State's Rights" part. The Constitution is a balance and should not be Federal heavy like it has become in the 1900's to today.
I have no problem with States Rights. I have a problem with people trying to dress up naked self-interest and practical politics by saying "States Rights".
Mostly, transparent attempts to restrict services and rights from subsets of the citizenry. In either real attempts at discrimination, or cynical efforts that are doomed to fail at anything but driving up voter turn-out.
There was an article two weeks ago about a similar effort in NY state which I thought had an unusually revealing quote:
Deborah Dorman, president of the Eastern New York Coalition of Auto Dealers, was at that meeting and said Tuesday Cuomo aides told the group the governor would sign the bill if it passes.
She said the bill was designed to protect consumers because it required companies to create a storefront in the state and was not directed at Tesla because it sold electric vehicles. Some environmentalists have claimed the bill unfairly targets electric car manufacturers.
“Everyone is selling electric cars, it has nothing to do with that,” she said. “If you allow someone to come into the market with no overhead, that's an unfair advantage,” she said.
> “Everyone is selling electric cars, it has nothing to do with that,” she said. “If you allow someone to come into the market with no overhead, that's an unfair advantage,” she said.
Being more efficient than your competitors in NY state is apparently an unfair advantage.
True, but I think that the genie is out of the bottle on this one. Tesla is way too popular and residents of states that can't get them because of lobbiests are probably going to make it uncomfortable for politicians who don't eventually give in.
From the podcast, car dealerships/dealers were rated "least trusted" and "most painful" consumer experiences. Clearly that is for the benefit of the consumers...
I don't understand what is so unfair about it. Tesla is the one going into these states as a newcomer, they have an expensive product, they have to pay rent and hire workers. If these franchises want to complain, complain to the manufacturer they are representing.
The thing is these franchises don't offer enough value-added services needed justify the extra costs (or their existence). That is why they are afraid. They know this (this is why they have such a bad reputation from customers).
Also, cars are increasingly becoming more complicated. These hybrids being built now are so complicated that they require automated tests to be done to detect issues. As technology progresses, these franchises will increasingly rely on the manufacturer for assistance in solving problems that are not simple.
I think the real advantage to Tesla is that the feedback loop is faster. They can listen to customers and improve their products faster. Improving the products can further reduce the costs and increase it's competitiveness.
Car dealers exist because they isolate the risk of local car sales from the manufacturer. This includes not just inventory management but credit risk management and other business considerations. Business-wise, this is a very good thing. Car manufacturers are in the business of making cars, not selling them. (This is an important, if subtle, distinction.)
From a customer standpoint, they also provide a guaranteed location at which the car can be serviced. If you buy a common car like a Ford or a Toyota, you'll have your choice of mechanics. If you buy an import or a Fiat, your only option locally may be the dealer you purchased the car from.
As technology progresses, these franchises will increasingly rely on the manufacturer for assistance in solving problems that are not simple.
Yes, but if any such problem is severe enough that only the manufacturer can deal with it, they've got a mandatory recall issue, and the manufacturer would be forced to handle the problem. Car dealers usually have the best-trained (and first trained) mechanics for any model of car, pursuant to franchise licensing agreements.
real advantage to Tesla is that the feedback loop is faster.
In the real world, fast iteration for physical products is not a good thing. You end up turning any particular iteration of the car into a commodity, which lowers demand because buyers will want to just wait for the next iteration.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 167 ms ] threadI'm shocked, shocked to find that New Jerseyans are capable of performing such tasks. Are you sure you're pumping it properly? :D
(Yeah, yeah, I know, I should STFU and move to Somalia...)
Full-service gas stations, on the other hand, are neither prohibited nor mandated in most states. They would exist if there was a market. There's not. End of story.
Then you'd be happy to know that in addition to having full service, Oregon's gas prices are ~$.40 per gallon cheaper than California's. Full service doesn't seem to be resulting in dramatically higher prices.
> Who is so lazy at they can't get out of their comfy seat for 2 minutes?
Who doesn't have better things to do with their time than inhale gasoline fumes?
California's gas tax is ~$.70 per gallon, Oregon is ~$.50. Now granted, California has roughly 3x the miles of roadway that Oregon has...[1] This probably explains why California's roads are atrociously bad and Oregon's are relatively pristine.
[1] http://blog.cubitplanning.com/2010/02/road-miles-by-state/
Oregon's standards allow it to buy from a far larger market.
This is actually one area where the refining industry wants federal regulation: they would vastly prefer to deal with a single set of standards for the whole country than tailoring individual plants to 50 different standards.
http://www.epa.gov/otaq/fuels/gasolinefuels/rfg/areas.htm
So the state specific requirements only really matter if they exceed the federal standards.
It's pretty likely that reformulated gasoline is effective in reducing smog (I think CO is the big target).
Which is exactly the case in California, hence the higher prices.
California has an interesting history with environmental legislation, as it had a clean air board before the EPA existed: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Air_Resources_Board
There's no shortage of things they could be doing, but instead, we're paying them to stand around most of the time inhaling gasoline fumes. We could instead be paying those people to do something actually useful, like running fiber to homes and businesses, or delivering goods so that we don't have to travel, or a million other things that would increase our productivity.
And now you're being willfully ignorant. California has a variety of other regulations that lead to higher prices. But that doesn't change the fact that Oregon's gas-pumping regulation also leads to higher gas prices.
Way to be hyperbolic. Why not let the customer decide whether or not they want to do it themselves, rather than choosing what's best for them?
And surprise, surprise: in the 48 states where customers are free to choose, they overwhelmingly choose to pump their own gas.
It seems that it would actually be less convenient to have to wait for an attendant, especially when the station is busy. Unlike service from behind the checkout counter, the attendant must walk around to each car...at least twice I'm assuming...to start and stop the fuel? I'm not familiar with it.
I'm afraid I don't understand this bit (being European and all). Are you saying that not only there are attendants, but that you are forbidden from using the pump if an attendant is not available?
Sure, but we still end up paying less for gas than our neighbors.
Don't get me wrong, if it were up to me, this would be gone in a heartbeat ... but it's not the end of the world.
I don't even understand what the objection is.
I don't understand the objection to laws against cooking for yourself at home.
If it was cheaper to hire a Chef to cook meals, I wouldn't understand all the noise about making it mandatory either.
Bad analogy. If you want ammunition, I'll give you the following. Having an attendant pump your gas sucks because:
1. They screw up what type of fuel you want. Or how much of it.
2. When you yell at them to fix it, they have no idea what you're saying, because they don't speak English.
3. At a busy station, you have to wait for five minutes for them to even get to you.
4. And then you have to wait for another five minutes for them to come back and finish off.
5. If you have the tag you use to pay for gas on your keys ... well you have to hand your keys to a stranger. Same with a credit card, when you could have simply swiped yourself.
I can go on, but really, at the end of the day, this isn't a big deal. There are far worse things to complain about.
But my point is that it is indeed cheaper to hire a chef to cook meals -- in some cases, but that doesn't justify making it mandatory.
You're taking, as given, the claim that attended fuel pumping is cheaper -- but that's only true sometimes, just like with the home chef, especially if (as in my ignorant aristocrat example) you factor in opportunity costs, which was the point.
When people insist that attended fuel is cheaper in terms of sticker price ... well, that's dubious, but let's assume, for whatever reason, it is (maybe there are insurance savings?). It still has a higher opportunity cost for several reasons, many of which you just listed.
When I got back from my 2 year Alaska->Argentina drive I genuinely had to stop and think about what I was doing, unsure of how to proceed. It was a great novelty :)
My only comment is that if Tesla gets to do direct selling then Ford should also be allowed.
It is a local power thing, and I don't agree with it, but I also don't think anyone should get an unfair advantage just because they are new. That doesn't promote competition.
Imagine if that applied to the startup world: "Oh hey, you want to buy this SaaS product I built? Well, you can't sign up on my site, you'll have to buy from one of my SaaS distributors."
Madness.
I don't think this is going to be a big deal. If you own a fleet of cars (think rental car company), you can't technically buy from a manufacturer, but the standard loophole is the negotiations happen with the manufacturer, and the local dealer is the official seller and the dealer gets something like $75/car. Tesla should have no problem setting up a similar arrangement.
Never understood that.
1. Contact fortigate, they put a sales guy in touch with you. Ask him some tech questions, turns out he doesn't know anything. He gets a tech manager in the loop. Ask him, he doesn't know shit either, he gets one of his subordinates in the loop. Now there's 3 cc's on the email thread, and maybe they can tell you some details about the product.
2. They put you in touch with a reseller. A "relationship manager" at the reseller puts you in touch with a sales guy at the reseller. That sales guy tells you that you need a higher-end product than the one you expected, for twice as much money. You start questioning that, turns out he doesn't know much about the product and says "let me get fortigate back in on this" and pulls the 3 people from step 1 back into the email thread.
3. Now there's 5 people in the loop, with several of them arguing about what you need. Eventually it gets sorted, and the reseller ships you the thing you told them you needed a week ago.
.. all of this was to sell me about $4000 worth of hardware, total.
Now I'd understand their thinking if the reseller would just handle the customer relationship, but they had to pull fortigate back into it every time I asked a non-trivial pre-sales question, the kind any sysadmin would ask. Makes me wonder what all those "relationship managers" and sales guys are for.
The re-seller is obviously the under-performing part of your exchange, it should be their business to know what they are selling. Most likely it shows the current state of the market - not very many buyers ask these technical questions, hence the experience is not there for the reseller. If you'd want to feel better about it, at least the reseller you've dealt with now has some more knowledge of one of the products they are selling.
A lot of people don't understand that this isn't just high-end routers. It's actually all electronics.
Try to buy a motherboard directly from the manufacturer, or a monitor, or really, anything else.
The manufacturer will direct you to their sales wing, at which point, you will be instructed to buy from their approved distributors. Those distributors are large companies that work as middle men.
And then even those distributors will not sell their goods to you unless you have a reseller license and go through their application process.
In that case, Dell, Apple, Sony, and Microsoft must be morons. Because they sell directly to consumers.
It's not about simplicity or efficiency. It's much more efficient to sell directly to the consumer. It just takes an immense amount of resources that smaller manufacturers simply do not have. That's why medium/small sized manufacturers rely on larger middle men and retailers. Not because it's more efficient, but because they simply don't have a choice in the matter. They don't have the resources to go directly to the consumer.
> It just takes an immense amount of resources that smaller manufacturers simply do not have.
Requiring less resources is a form of efficiency for the manufacturer. Being able to simply ship to a single distributor vs shipping to many individuals and having the infrastructure to process those packages, is more efficient to the small manufacturers. It may not be on the wider economic scale but for small companies it saves a lot of work.
It's in the interest of protecting jobs of automotive dealers in an industry Tesla is disrupting. Nothing more.
If they want something illegal, they'll torture the law until it agrees.
... Oh wait.
Mostly, transparent attempts to restrict services and rights from subsets of the citizenry. In either real attempts at discrimination, or cynical efforts that are doomed to fail at anything but driving up voter turn-out.
Deborah Dorman, president of the Eastern New York Coalition of Auto Dealers, was at that meeting and said Tuesday Cuomo aides told the group the governor would sign the bill if it passes.
She said the bill was designed to protect consumers because it required companies to create a storefront in the state and was not directed at Tesla because it sold electric vehicles. Some environmentalists have claimed the bill unfairly targets electric car manufacturers.
“Everyone is selling electric cars, it has nothing to do with that,” she said. “If you allow someone to come into the market with no overhead, that's an unfair advantage,” she said.
http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/albany/2014/02/8540876...
Being more efficient than your competitors in NY state is apparently an unfair advantage.
The government should seek consumer input on this.
I'm completely unsurprised that Arizona and Texas, supposed bastions of capitalism, oppose a better form of business.
Short version: the auto dealers are a powerful lobby group that prevent this from happening.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/02/19/172402376/why-buyi...
I don't understand what is so unfair about it. Tesla is the one going into these states as a newcomer, they have an expensive product, they have to pay rent and hire workers. If these franchises want to complain, complain to the manufacturer they are representing.
The thing is these franchises don't offer enough value-added services needed justify the extra costs (or their existence). That is why they are afraid. They know this (this is why they have such a bad reputation from customers).
Also, cars are increasingly becoming more complicated. These hybrids being built now are so complicated that they require automated tests to be done to detect issues. As technology progresses, these franchises will increasingly rely on the manufacturer for assistance in solving problems that are not simple.
I think the real advantage to Tesla is that the feedback loop is faster. They can listen to customers and improve their products faster. Improving the products can further reduce the costs and increase it's competitiveness.
From a customer standpoint, they also provide a guaranteed location at which the car can be serviced. If you buy a common car like a Ford or a Toyota, you'll have your choice of mechanics. If you buy an import or a Fiat, your only option locally may be the dealer you purchased the car from.
As technology progresses, these franchises will increasingly rely on the manufacturer for assistance in solving problems that are not simple.
Yes, but if any such problem is severe enough that only the manufacturer can deal with it, they've got a mandatory recall issue, and the manufacturer would be forced to handle the problem. Car dealers usually have the best-trained (and first trained) mechanics for any model of car, pursuant to franchise licensing agreements.
real advantage to Tesla is that the feedback loop is faster.
In the real world, fast iteration for physical products is not a good thing. You end up turning any particular iteration of the car into a commodity, which lowers demand because buyers will want to just wait for the next iteration.
If it were really the slam-dunk win you claim it is, Tesla would probably have used dealers too.