Posted on 10/18/2014 11:08:04 AM PDT by Kaslin
The Michigan Legislature has put a bill on Governor Rick Snyder’s desk that would, essentially, kick Tesla Motors Inc. out of the state. The home of Government General Motors, it seems, is still home to big-government coercion and cronyism. The bill, which is awaiting the Gov’s signature, would ban direct sales from a car company (Tesla) to individual consumers. (Coincidentally, this just happens to be Tesla’s business model.) The legislation was put forward because… well, I guess that buying things directly from producers and manufacturers is bad for you, or something.
The National Automobile Dealers Association must have been less than thrilled that they weren’t getting a slice of Tesla’s sales, so they did what any good crony-capitalist would do: They marched down to their friendly (cash-strapped) political campaign, and proposed a law that would outlaw their competition.
(Excerpt) Read more at finance.townhall.com ...
Yea but is crony on crony... Tesla get tons of kickback and tax breaks..
A pox on both their houses. .. we need a true free market
The crooks in New Jersey (but I repeat myself) did the same thing, for the very same, very specious, reasons.
That's a complete sentence. Needs no other words. I know. I live here.
The politicians were pretty quiet while GM and Chrysler canceled hundreds of Dealers..now all of a sudden they are worried that a few Dealers will miss out.
I don’t know why Tesla just doesn’t sign up some dummy dealers..all they need is a sales agent. They just aren’t using their heads.
That’s a good point. They could give all these cronies the shaft without much effort.
I’m sure that Governor Snyder is busy polling the electorate to discover whether to sign or veto this bill.
Based on the contributions from traditional motor money to his campaign, he’s probably inclined to protect the status quo.
MI ping.
Exactly.
“That’s a good point. They could give all these cronies the shaft without much effort.” -samtheman
My guess is that Tesla's lawyers looked into it and probably surmised that they would be opening themselves up to a lawsuit from the dealers. The dealers could sue saying that Tesla was effectively selling directly to consumers even if Tesla was using some workaround.
Cut Tesla some slack. They paid back all of their government loans, with interest. Taxpayers made $26 million on the deal.
Also, the thing with the whole $1.3B Nevada “incentive” that most people don't realize is that it was basically just a tax holiday, not actual funding. Tesla doesn't have to pay sales tax for 20 years or property taxes for 10 years (in Nevada) and that adds up to over a billion dollars in savings for Tesla. Other states offered similar deals, Nevada just offered the longest holiday.
This is a common tactic that states use to compete against each other in order to bring jobs to their state, or that countries use to compete against each other in order to bring jobs to their country.
It is not really a case of cronyism, because it did not involve Tesla sucking up to lawmakers, in fact quite the contrary, lawmakers from several states were kissing Tesla's rear in order to get his factory in their state.
~Spartan
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Sorry I’m not terribly interested in what Teslaphiles think.
You people are like some kind of bizarre cult.
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