Elon Musk comes to tears over auto dealers perversion of democracy
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Harley Davidson is a very successful example of a franchised dealership structure. He seems to have skipped that for some reason. Though I don't know enough about the company to know whether or not its a good case study, HD is very much a one of a kind company in many regards.
I believe Elon said Tesla will be profitable next quarter excluding carbon tax credits which is the only existing subsidy they get as a corporation. As for the buyers do you really think the $5-$7k credits the buyers get (at least in the U.S. based on the state they are in) are enough that if they were to stop getting those credits Tesla would stop selling all cars? I mean they aren't exactly selling cheap cars. What's $5-7k if you are already spending $70-90k? That's about a 10% discount.