Using courts and compliant politicians, Florida car dealers are fighting to keep Floridians from buying electric vehicles directly from the companies that make them.
While I’m not a big fan of car dealerships, we should acknowledge that these are generally local businesses supporting our communities. The jobs are local and service (such as it is) is local. I doubt that we want to follow the Amazon model.
I get this, but I would argue that there are much better and more efficient ways to to support jobs and local businesses than to enforce and maintain a century-old, anti-competitive franchise system that intentionally limits consumer choice and distorts the market in all sorts of negative ways, including through higher prices and slower innovation.
I think it’s important to identify what practices are anticompetitive and address those directly. On its face, cutting out the middlemen and ordering directly from the factory is totally non competitive - one supplier only. Have mail-order pharmacies reduced the price of drugs?
Compared to other consumer goods, vehicles are fairly unique. If they break or are unsatisfactory, you can’t just drop them off at UPS to return. The legislature would have to mandate that the manufacturers have some sort of service presence locally.
I can certainly see a model where the local facility, instead of maintaining an inventory for sale, just has demo vehicles for customers to examine and drive. They’d then take orders to be fulfilled at the factory. None of the old school price negotiation nonsense. They’d mainly function to service warranties, do repairs, and deliver new vehicles. There’s also no reason that one facility couldn’t represent multiple manufacturers. They’d be local jobs, part of the community and be a more cost-effective way of selling.
While I’m not a big fan of car dealerships, we should acknowledge that these are generally local businesses supporting our communities. The jobs are local and service (such as it is) is local. I doubt that we want to follow the Amazon model.
I get this, but I would argue that there are much better and more efficient ways to to support jobs and local businesses than to enforce and maintain a century-old, anti-competitive franchise system that intentionally limits consumer choice and distorts the market in all sorts of negative ways, including through higher prices and slower innovation.
I think it’s important to identify what practices are anticompetitive and address those directly. On its face, cutting out the middlemen and ordering directly from the factory is totally non competitive - one supplier only. Have mail-order pharmacies reduced the price of drugs?
Compared to other consumer goods, vehicles are fairly unique. If they break or are unsatisfactory, you can’t just drop them off at UPS to return. The legislature would have to mandate that the manufacturers have some sort of service presence locally.
I can certainly see a model where the local facility, instead of maintaining an inventory for sale, just has demo vehicles for customers to examine and drive. They’d then take orders to be fulfilled at the factory. None of the old school price negotiation nonsense. They’d mainly function to service warranties, do repairs, and deliver new vehicles. There’s also no reason that one facility couldn’t represent multiple manufacturers. They’d be local jobs, part of the community and be a more cost-effective way of selling.
Common in NC and NJ, too. Car Dealers,
like similar trade associations, often exist to kill competition.
You do really great work overall. Thanks!
As long as people don't buy anything from Elon Musk.!!
Then i’ll put Big Oil and Big Auto on a chokehold!