[almost_usual]

"This is 2019," he said. "People want to buy things online."

But he added that franchise-dealer opposition would be a violation of interstate commerce, and that is unconstitutional.

"Good luck with that," Musk said.

Sounds like Musk likes to pick and choose the laws he follows.

Source: https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-is-eliminating-most-of...

[travisoneill1]

I'm glad he has picked this one to break then. Requiring a middleman to sell cars is even stupider than taxi medallions.

[sytelus]

What you call “law” is mandate established by car dealers by buying off politicians. This is one of the most disgusting monopolistic snake oil business that had little chance of surviving otherwise for so long. Musk is doing great favor to all of us by showing them middle finger and letting them know that they can’t hide behind their purchased politicians.

[olyjohn]

Honest question, where do Tesla owners take their cars for repairs if there are no dealerships? I always thought the dealership laws were pretty consumer friendly in this way. I can find dealerships and independent shops to have my cars repaired pretty much anywhere in the country.

Tesla doesn't let anybody else fix their cars. So you have to take it to their... what, repair center?

[Dylan16807]

Laws that make independent shops possible are great.

Dealerships may or may not have your best pricing interests in mind, so forcing them to exist is not particularly useful.

[donarb]

Middlemen help you buy a car from competing dealers. Buying only from Tesla means you can’t negotiate for a better price.

[sjwright]

Dealers are stupid and make no sense.

I may be a weird consumer but whenever I buy something expensive I always think about the unrelated things my money is paying for. So for example when I visit a car dealership I notice the big land footprint, the shiny offices, and well dressed salespeople—and I think to myself how much of my car purchase is going towards the upkeep of this crap, none of which I like or want.

If I want to learn about the car, I'd much rather access the manufacturer's website and read/watch independent reviews.

If I want to test drive a car I'd be willing to travel further to test drive one directly from the manufacturer. Or better still, just don't test drive it at all—you won't learn anything in an hour that you couldn't learn from a reviewer. The true character of a car usually takes a week or more to surface.

If I want to buy a car, I'd much rather buy it directly from the manufacturer and either pick it up from a central depot (to save money) or have it delivered directly to my home and detailed on my driveway (for a fee based on distance).

[dagw]

I wouldn't mind car dealers if they actually offered a useful independent service. When I go to buy a camera the person in the store can explain the pros and cons of Canon vs Nikon vs Fuji vs Sony and let me try them all next to each other. Why can't I go to a car dealer and have them explain the pros and cons of Honda vs Toyota vs Nissan and let me compare them right there in the store.

I trust the guy at my local camera store to explain the pros and cons of a Canon vs a Fuji, I obviously don't expect they guy at my local Honda dealer to explain the pros and cons of a Honda vs a Toyota.

[sjwright]

Rule of thumb for life: Never ever get advice about what to buy from the person selling it, unless that person has literally no incentive whatsoever, or if the purchase is extremely low risk (e.g. low item cost or hassle-free returns policy).

Camera stores is a great example. The vast majority of salespeople know how to convince you that a product suits your needs, but would have very little clue what is important to get the best outcome. They're not photographers—or if they are, chances are they're no more of a photography expert than you.

Perhaps the worst is "high end" hi-fi salespeople. These slick operators are great at convincing you to buy the unnecessarily expensive product and the criminally overpriced accessories. Unfortunately for the customer, most of the things that matter in making a good system aren't sold in a cardboard box with a big profit margin, so you'll never hear about them from a hi-fi salesperson.

[jakobegger]

My experience with test drives is that you immediately know if you like the car or not. Reviews have never really made sense to me, most reviewers seem to talk about stuff I just don't care about.

The only problem is that dealers usually only have cars with the most popular engines available, so you often can't actually try the car you want to buy...

[lsc]

Interesting. My experience is that if I want some idea of how I'll feel about the car in a year, a test drive of less than a week gives me almost no data.

Personally? yeah, I think renting a car is the way to go, if you want to evaluate how you will feel about the car later. A 20 minute test drive, to me, is like laying on a mattress for 20 minutes in a store and expecting to know what it will feel like to sleep on.

[mrhappyunhappy]

I feel the same. I’ve had stronger urges to buy a car I rented than one I test drive for 10 minutes. You just never get the same level of familiarity, the little quirks and knowing how your body feels after an extended multi-day drive if you simply test drive at dealer. I like to have my cars for a week at the minimum before I can confidently form a strong opinion in regards to purchase.

[aedron]

An important part of choosing a car is ergonomics. I like to rest my arms on the door and middle console armrests while driving, but my brand new (expensive) SUV, bought sight unseen, comes just short of being able to do this, which bothers me a little every day. Obviously these things differ from person to person, so yeah, next time I'll probably go for a test drive first.

[sjwright]

Find a reviewer that has a similar body size to you. There's literally hundreds of car reviewers on youtube, there will be plenty who will have the same ergonomic structure to you.

Remember: you're not special. You're just another meat bag that fits within a bell curve of normalness.

Edit: to the one person who voted me down, I was wrong. You aren't a meat bag, you are special.

[sjwright]

I always thought it was weird that we negotiate a price with new car purchases. I do negotiate hard on my cars (and on behalf of family) and I hate the process. It's stupid. I'd much rather the manufacturer nominate a fixed price and not allow any negotiation at all. Then the manufacturer would be forced to pick a price that competes with the market.

There are only a few things that excite me more about a Model 3 than electric cars from established brands (particularly the upcoming Kia Niro EV) and a big one is the sales process.

[ghaff]

There are no haggle dealers and have been no haggle brands from time to time. One problem is that the people who like and think of themselves as driving a hard bargain don’t like the inability to do so

[sjwright]

For those people who like to drive a hard bargain, they can do what everyone does with every other expensive commodity—wait for the time when sales numbers are dropping off and take advantage of sharper prices.

After all I'm not saying that car makers can't have "deals" but the price of any new car for sale—on special or a regular—should be published and not negotiated.

[mikelward]

Last time I bought a car, the "no haggle" dealers like DGDG were about 10% more expensive.

[squish78]

RIP Saturn

[jjeaff]

Those that truly do know how to work the system should be able to get a better deal. Subsidized of course by those who are not good at it. Or who don't care.

[marssaxman]

Where I come from, we call those people "assholes".

[oarsinsync]

Or a store should be selling goods at the same price to all consumers, instead of giving some consumers preferential pricing over others if they know the right hand-shake.

Consumer price discrimination isn't something that should be occurring.

[MPSimmons]

When you buy a laptop from HP, do you negotiate with the web form? If you went into an HP store (assuming there was one), would you negotiate with them there?

This doesn't make sense to me.

[olyjohn]

When we make large purchases from HP, Dell, Microsoft, you're damn right we negotiate the rates and get discounts. If you're making a purchase that is a large percentage of your budget, you'd be stupid to not try.

When you're buying one laptop, of course not. You're talking a $3000 purchase vs a $40,000+ purchase. You negotiate on cars, because getting a thousand or two off is a huge deal for a lot of people.

The "No haggle" thing that Tesla is doing works fine for their $60,000-$120,000 cars. People spending that kind of cash on a car are probably not going to bat an eye at an extra thousand or two. Anybody spending that much money on a car isn't buying it because they have a limited budget, and are not trying to maximize their value.

I don't think it's going to work as well on their lower priced cars. People who don't have a $50-60k budget for a car don't have tons of money to throw around.

[Sohcahtoa82]

Don't you think it's silly that paying sticker price is considered paying extra?

Haggling is stupid. Cars are usually overpriced because the expectation of haggling is priced in. I'd rather Tesla put a $35K price tag on their Model 3 knowing that's exactly what I'll pay than put a $38K tag knowing that I'll try to haggle it down to $35k.

A random citizen buying a single car isn't comparable to a corporation negotiating a volume discount.

[vetinari]

You can order laptops via phone or email, you know.

Thinking about it, my last three laptops were bought with a discount, just by not being afraid to ask for some.

[gwbas1c]

The US is the only country that follows this scheme, and it's only certain manufacturers that let their franchises get away with that.

Next time try buying a Honda or a Subaru. There's almost no wiggle-room in price.

[grogenaut]

I kicked 5k off of the deal price a subaru forrester 2 years ago, by saying no 3 times. No trade either.

[DoubleCribble]

Sorry, that's not true at all. There's often A LOT of wiggle room.

Insider Tip: The internet desk is usually separate from the floor desk at your average dealership. When you know exactly which car you want to buy, negotiate through the internet desk only at several dealerships. But be prepared to walk if they try to pull a bait & switch when you show up to purchase.

[mrhappyunhappy]

The problem with your insider tip is that everyone, dealer included knows about it. I hate when people say be prepared to walk when most of us don’t have a million dealerships to visit. Sure if you’re in Southern California you can visit 6 Honda dealers and waste 1-2 days. You’ll get the quoted price and then they’ll try to stick you the next time you come in. Consumer is at a huge disadvantage here because dealers know they have limited time. It’s no secret dealers make you wait forever so you grow impatient and agree to their bullshit. Some of us don’t want to deal with that kind of crap.

[ntsplnkv2]

Haggled significantly on a Subaru just last year.

Honda in the past. They may not move as much, but they definitely move.

[almost_usual]

I own a Toyota and I was definitely able to negotiate a lower price.

[emiliobumachar]

Here in Brazil it's also haggling hell to buy a car.

[dogcomplex]

This person has a point. We should put a thin layer of collective consumer organization (regional, statewide, national, global, or some other user-defined organization) that's programmatically (smart-contract-based) guaranteed to hunt for better bulk deals with the supplier within certain convenience parameters (e.g. "I want to buy mine within the month"). If these were open-source programs (ideally run in trustless blockchain envs) then the competition to create a popular one would undercut their middleman profits to optimally-tiny percentages due to arbitrage.

As it stands, we are an unorganized mob who the middlemen and manufacturers are squabbling over and each making a profit. But it's becoming pretty clear we'll be able to program the middlemen cheaper/better in the near future (or services can just offer direct-online shopping), so should that remaining profit go to the manufacturer or the consumer? Tesla's being pretty generous now (or appears to be), but future (and present) direct online shippers may benefit greatly from the organizational imbalance. This is the same argument for collectively-purchased (government) healthcare, I believe.

(And yes, companies obviously should be compensated according to their risk and willingness to invest at scarce times - Tesla certainly deserves big praise from many angles - but examining this relationship from a societal standpoint and collectively bargaining for the end consumer (advocating for the poorest of us) is important too)

[awad]

Well, in this case, there is no middleman. And, with Tesla, there never has been AFAIK. So not sure if applicable. But assuming a general statement, I have to bite...why smart contract?