[jkilpatr]

EV are explicitly treated differently.

Telsa insisted on it's direct sales model and it was more politically expedient for regulators in many states to carve out an exception to the dealership requirement only for car companies that sell EV's exclusively (only tesla at the time).

While I suppose this didn't seem like a huge threat to the car dealership lobby in each state at the time it's clearly come back to bite them and is the main reason Fords Electric vehicle production and distribution is a different 'car company' on paper, so that they can take advantage of legislation designed for tesla.