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Comment by TOMDM | Hacker News Reader

From the article.

""" But as Florida Politics noted previously, lobbyists, including Taylor Biehl and Jeff Sharkey of Tallahassee-based Capitol Alliance Group, hammered out a deal adding language to the bill that should keep Tesla galleries open.

The change confirms newer manufacturers like Tesla, Rivian and Lucid are authorized to hold a franchise dealer license for direct sales of EVs if they are not otherwise prohibited under federal law. That carve-out apparently does not extend to traditional manufacturers such as GM, Ford, Honda and Toyota, all of which now make battery-powered cars. """

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Admittedly I haven’t looked into the bill, but I’m curious how it was written to carve them out without actually naming them.

Basically if there is an existing physical dealership one is excluded from seting up a virtual store.

Seems like this would create a temptation to spin off another company that just does EVs.

This really seems like late stage capitalism. The partnership between automakers and auto dealers has been celebrated over a 100 years. They are now employing politicians to legislate the business partnership over their shared interest.

They have been doing that for over a century. So, if so, the late stage of capitalism is dragging on a bit. I would challenge the notion that dealers have been “celebrated” by anyone but themselves.

I was trying to describe the celebration that went on between the auto makers and the dealers. I'm sure there were many get togethers at resorts all over the world for them to celebrate the relationship.

They are now in the same relationship but are using politicians to maintain the status quo relationship. It definitely is not a healthy sign for the efficiencies of business in the USA.

But that’s not exactly right. Going back to the 1920s dealerships were reaching for the lever of legislative action to protect their position and they’ve done it over and over since.

Oh, my mistake this is business as usual. All the their happy talk fooled me. Do you know a case name?

This article people have been passing around in the thread contains a bit of a history of the car dealership lobbying, which started during World War I when they feared being driven out of business by automakers converting entirely to war materiel production and cutting them out. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/05/rich-republicans...

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