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The Missouri Automobile Dealers Association sued the Missouri Revenue Department and now a judge has ruled in their favor on part of their claims in Missouri.
Cole County Judge Daniel Green ruled that the Missouri Revenue Department violated state law when it gave the California-based manufacturer a license for a University City dealership in 2013 and a franchise dealer license for a Kansas City dealership in 2014. That allowed the automaker to sell cars directly to customers instead of through a dealership serving as a middleman.
[...] Tesla has faced similar roadblocks to selling its cars in several states with dealership laws similar to Missouri's. In some of those states, legislators have been looking at ways to tweak laws and let the company operate.
Previously: Tesla Direct Sales Blocked in New Jersey
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 02 2016, @06:26PM
These laws have been around for a *long* time.
Tesla is not the first to try this model. Pretty much all of the other car manufactures did the same thing at some point. You dont think we just magically got these laws because someone wasn't doing something shady?
They would come in buy all the local dealerships then close most of them. Leaving you with 1 'dealer' if you were lucky. Understandably most people were upset with the poor competition.
Take for example the town I live in. It is the home of Krispy Kreme. You figure there would be several dozen stores in the area selling doughnuts right? For about 50 years there was 1. Now there are 3. After they figured out people were not going to drive for 40 mins to get a doughnut. They very carefully control the stores to make sure there is low competition but high margin. Car dealers have even more on the line.
They do this because lets say I want to buy a Ford. I can go to 4-5 dealers in my area and pick something and even make the dealers compete on their margin to get me to buy. I can substitute a Chevy but it is not quite the same thing. The car manufactures figured out they didn't have to compete on margin. They could just mark whatever because the market for a 'ford' is a monopoly market. But the market for cars is not.