Tesla Motors will decisively, even state by state if necessary, win its ongoing war with the car dealership associations, according to a recent op-ed by a prominent industry journalist.
The most that the dealership associations can hope for with their lawsuits is a short delay to Tesla’s expansion and growth — a delay that won’t stop the turning tide, according to said op-ed.
The rather interesting opinion piece was published in the auto-industry trade journal Ward’s Auto. There’s not much ambiguity to the piece, the exact words that it ends with are: “We can keep Tesla busy defending what are basically nuisance suits. But it will prevail in all states one at a time. Or there will be some sort of sweeping federal action in its favor.” 🙂
Green Car Reports provides more:
With the feisty title of “Who’s Afraid of Elon Musk?”, the piece is written by regular Ward’s commenter Jim Ziegler, president of Ziegler Supersystems in Atlanta. He describes himself as a trainer, commentator and public speaker on dealership issues.
Ziegler, of course, doesn’t speak for the National Automobile Dealers Assocation, which is a powerful lobbying force in Washington, DC. Earlier this year, the association attempted to mount a public-relations campaign to explain why auto dealers are the best and only legal way to sell cars to buyers. We haven’t seen much of that effort lately.
The dealerships do seem to be expending all of their options, it seems unlikely that such efforts can continue at the pace that they have been.
In the latest news on that front, Tesla recently won the legal battle in Massachusetts — and now has the enshrined right to keep its Tesla Stores open and sell cars online directly to buyers.
Image Credit: Tesla Motors
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