9 ms·

Tesla Clashes With Car Dealers

87 points by fieldforceapp 13y ago

mikestew 13y ago
The link takes me to a paywall. The non-paywall version is: http://stream.wsj.com/story/latest-headlines/SS-2-63399/SS-2-255429/ http://stream.wsj.com/story/latest-headlines/SS-2-63399/SS-2...
- mdturnerphys 13y ago
  For the WSJ, accessing the article through a search result (e.g. googling the article's title) will give you the full version of the article.
  - mercutio2 13y ago
    I keep hearing this. It has never once worked for me, on any device and the WSJ pay wall. What browser are you using? Do you have cookies disabled?
    - hayksaakian 13y ago
      wsj needs some way to know you came from Google, so if that's cookies, referrers, etc. you may be blocking it.
      - Aissen 13y ago
        In particular, https google to http wsj.
    - mdturnerphys 13y ago
      Firefox, cookies not disabled.
    - yashg 13y ago
      May be because wsj is playing smart here. When go to the article for the first time they are putting a cookie on your browser, so even when you visit through a search engine it is still able to detect you as a previous visitor and showing you a paywall. Use a different browser to do the search or clear the cookies before doing the search or block all cookies form wsj. That's what I did with experts-exchange.com long back and it worked.
      - mdturnerphys 13y ago
        Nope. I only ever do the search trick after hitting the paywall, and it always works for me.
jvm 13y ago
The zinger: > Dealers say laws passed over the decades to prevent car makers from selling directly to consumers are justified because without them auto makers could use their economic clout to sell vehicles for less than their independent franchisees. To rephrase: Auto dealers increase the price of cars without producing value, therefore they must be protected by law or they would cease to exist.
- nirvdrum 13y ago
  Well, they do produce value. Ford couldn't possibly service every municipality in the country and thus relies on dealers. So, the dealers take the risk and do the market research, but Ford is always able to undercut them on price. But Ford probably still can't service all these locations, so they'll only undercut dealers in the most profitable centers and kick dealers out to pick up scraps. Understandably, many won't bother, and so now purchasing a vehicle becomes much harder. Since most dealerships now are full service centers and they have a monopoly on the diagnostic equipment necessary for servicing modern vehicles in some jurisdictions, this also means servicing a vehicle becomes much harder.
  - greglindahl 13y ago
    Makes sense -- that's why Tesla is so eager to sign up dealers, because it's totally worth the money they charge! (That was sarcasm, btw. A tiny car maker like Tesla will never get anything like a fair deal from dealers, especially if state law gives dealers a monopoly. It's a disfunctional marketplace.)
    - TheAnimus 13y ago
      I had a similar thought two years ago when I bought my car. I test drove about 6 differen't cars in total, if it was not for the fact that the dealer at the showroom was a complete dick, constantly trying to sell me a loan scheme which I did not want, I might have bought it from the dealer. Instead I used an online broker firm. As a result I got about £5,000 off the list price of a £20,000 car. The joke is two years later someone offered me £14,000 for it last month, this is due to the lack of cars which qualify for exemption from Londons Congestion Charging Zone. Now whilst I would hands down recommend the sales service I recieved from the broker, I still value the fact I was able to try so many differen't cars. I think that we could potentially see a new system for doing test drives, either as Tesla has, the manufacturer pays for booths, which will often lack local knowledge (dealers know what sells in their patch better than some top down management). Or, and this could be the interesting one, some form of part time demonstraiters. People who get a heavily discounted lease or similar (who would want a stranger to ruin their own gearbox, lease would be the only option) with the agreement to be available for 10 hours a week of test drives or similar. Given a £30k car leases normally for about £400 pcm, 40 hours a month of demotime would be a fair trade, for what is ultimately a fairly un-skilled job.
vampirical 13y ago
Paywall busted: http://const.it/http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324049504578541902814606098.html http://const.it/http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100014241278...
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
ibudiallo 13y ago
It's unfortunate that you have to subscribe to wsj to read.
marcosscriven 13y ago
"but buyers have to order the cars online from California" Sorry if a dumb question, but if you're in Texas how do they stop you buying online? I mean, how do they check? Do you have people using proxies in specific states to get around this?
quattrofan 13y ago
Middlemen, driving up costs for everyone for the last 2000 years.
- rgbrenner 13y ago
  Munger on Middlemen " ... about the often-vilified middleman--someone who buys cheap, sells dear and does nothing to improve the product. Munger explains the economic function of arbitrage using a classic article about how prices emerged in a POW camp during World War II. " http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2008/10/munger_on_middl.html http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2008/10/munger_on_middl.htm...
magoon 13y ago
Dealers are the problem.
polyfractal 13y ago
NPR Planet Money has a great episode on the history of car dealerships: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/02/12/171814201/episode-435-why-buying-a-car-is-so-awful http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/02/12/171814201/episode-... Basically, everyone in this thread is right. - Local dealerships were originally founded because in the 1920s, cars were big/expensive and hard to move around the country. Cars needed a lot of repairs, so local dealers to service them made sense. - During the Great Depression, car manufacturers continued to make cars despite no one buying them. So they forced dealerships to purchase cars, or else get banned from selling their brand ever again (effectively terminating the business, obviously bad if you have loans and other capital investments). This was before overseas competition from Japanese/Korean manufacturers existed, so losing your contract to Ford meant you were pretty sunk. - Dealerships fought back by getting legislation passed to protect them legally, slowly granting more power to the dealerships over time. Now the balance of power is far, far on the side of dealers - manufacturers cannot shut down dealerships, cannot control who runs them, must provide cars to dealers even if they are in poorly profitable areas, cannot tell the dealers what to sell, no real way to incentive dealers to not be "car salesmen" assholes, etc etc.

87 points by fieldforceapp 13y ago

The link takes me to a paywall. The non-paywall version is: http://stream.wsj.com/story/latest-headlines/SS-2-63399/SS-2-255429/ http://stream.wsj.com/story/latest-headlines/SS-2-63399/SS-2...

mdturnerphys 13y ago
For the WSJ, accessing the article through a search result (e.g. googling the article's title) will give you the full version of the article.
- mercutio2 13y ago
  I keep hearing this. It has never once worked for me, on any device and the WSJ pay wall. What browser are you using? Do you have cookies disabled?
  - hayksaakian 13y ago
    wsj needs some way to know you came from Google, so if that's cookies, referrers, etc. you may be blocking it.
    - Aissen 13y ago
      In particular, https google to http wsj.
  - mdturnerphys 13y ago
    Firefox, cookies not disabled.
  - yashg 13y ago
    May be because wsj is playing smart here. When go to the article for the first time they are putting a cookie on your browser, so even when you visit through a search engine it is still able to detect you as a previous visitor and showing you a paywall. Use a different browser to do the search or clear the cookies before doing the search or block all cookies form wsj. That's what I did with experts-exchange.com long back and it worked.
    - mdturnerphys 13y ago
      Nope. I only ever do the search trick after hitting the paywall, and it always works for me.

jvm 13y ago

The zinger: > Dealers say laws passed over the decades to prevent car makers from selling directly to consumers are justified because without them auto makers could use their economic clout to sell vehicles for less than their independent franchisees. To rephrase: Auto dealers increase the price of cars without producing value, therefore they must be protected by law or they would cease to exist.

nirvdrum 13y ago
Well, they do produce value. Ford couldn't possibly service every municipality in the country and thus relies on dealers. So, the dealers take the risk and do the market research, but Ford is always able to undercut them on price. But Ford probably still can't service all these locations, so they'll only undercut dealers in the most profitable centers and kick dealers out to pick up scraps. Understandably, many won't bother, and so now purchasing a vehicle becomes much harder. Since most dealerships now are full service centers and they have a monopoly on the diagnostic equipment necessary for servicing modern vehicles in some jurisdictions, this also means servicing a vehicle becomes much harder.
- greglindahl 13y ago
  Makes sense -- that's why Tesla is so eager to sign up dealers, because it's totally worth the money they charge! (That was sarcasm, btw. A tiny car maker like Tesla will never get anything like a fair deal from dealers, especially if state law gives dealers a monopoly. It's a disfunctional marketplace.)
  - TheAnimus 13y ago
    I had a similar thought two years ago when I bought my car. I test drove about 6 differen't cars in total, if it was not for the fact that the dealer at the showroom was a complete dick, constantly trying to sell me a loan scheme which I did not want, I might have bought it from the dealer. Instead I used an online broker firm. As a result I got about £5,000 off the list price of a £20,000 car. The joke is two years later someone offered me £14,000 for it last month, this is due to the lack of cars which qualify for exemption from Londons Congestion Charging Zone. Now whilst I would hands down recommend the sales service I recieved from the broker, I still value the fact I was able to try so many differen't cars. I think that we could potentially see a new system for doing test drives, either as Tesla has, the manufacturer pays for booths, which will often lack local knowledge (dealers know what sells in their patch better than some top down management). Or, and this could be the interesting one, some form of part time demonstraiters. People who get a heavily discounted lease or similar (who would want a stranger to ruin their own gearbox, lease would be the only option) with the agreement to be available for 10 hours a week of test drives or similar. Given a £30k car leases normally for about £400 pcm, 40 hours a month of demotime would be a fair trade, for what is ultimately a fairly un-skilled job.

vampirical 13y ago

Paywall busted: http://const.it/http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324049504578541902814606098.html http://const.it/http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100014241278...

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

ibudiallo 13y ago

It's unfortunate that you have to subscribe to wsj to read.

marcosscriven 13y ago

"but buyers have to order the cars online from California" Sorry if a dumb question, but if you're in Texas how do they stop you buying online? I mean, how do they check? Do you have people using proxies in specific states to get around this?

quattrofan 13y ago

Middlemen, driving up costs for everyone for the last 2000 years.

rgbrenner 13y ago
Munger on Middlemen " ... about the often-vilified middleman--someone who buys cheap, sells dear and does nothing to improve the product. Munger explains the economic function of arbitrage using a classic article about how prices emerged in a POW camp during World War II. " http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2008/10/munger_on_middl.html http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2008/10/munger_on_middl.htm...

magoon 13y ago

Dealers are the problem.

polyfractal 13y ago

NPR Planet Money has a great episode on the history of car dealerships: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/02/12/171814201/episode-435-why-buying-a-car-is-so-awful http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/02/12/171814201/episode-... Basically, everyone in this thread is right. - Local dealerships were originally founded because in the 1920s, cars were big/expensive and hard to move around the country. Cars needed a lot of repairs, so local dealers to service them made sense. - During the Great Depression, car manufacturers continued to make cars despite no one buying them. So they forced dealerships to purchase cars, or else get banned from selling their brand ever again (effectively terminating the business, obviously bad if you have loans and other capital investments). This was before overseas competition from Japanese/Korean manufacturers existed, so losing your contract to Ford meant you were pretty sunk. - Dealerships fought back by getting legislation passed to protect them legally, slowly granting more power to the dealerships over time. Now the balance of power is far, far on the side of dealers - manufacturers cannot shut down dealerships, cannot control who runs them, must provide cars to dealers even if they are in poorly profitable areas, cannot tell the dealers what to sell, no real way to incentive dealers to not be "car salesmen" assholes, etc etc.