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Comment by echohack | Hacker News Reader

How does this bill effect Telsa? Does Telsa have it's own company run franchises in New York or something?

I've read the bill (http://assembly.state.ny.us/leg/?default_fld=&bn=A07844&term...) several times now, and it only seems to prohibit the franchisor from forcing franchisees from doing certain things.

I'm not seeing text in here like, "We hereby force all franchisors to sell cars through franchisees." or "Selling directly to consumers is prohibited." or anything of the sort.

I am not a lawyer, perhaps someone more familiar with how selling cars works want to explain?

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Green car Report's reading of these two bills is this would make it illegal for Tesla to register cars in the state by making it impossible for the state to register any vehicle not purchased from a franchisee.

http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1084963_new-york-auto-de...

Looks like New Jersey and Connecticut are going to see a surge in Model S registrations.

Planet Money had a good article on this:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/02/19/172402376/why-buyi...

Basically dealers have codified protections via the franchise laws(even in places like Texas, North Carolina, etc), and this hinders the direct sale of autos. Not just from Tesla, but also CarsDirect, Costco, etc.

I think it might be this? The format is terrible.

The commissioner shall not issue any certificate of registration authorized by this section to any franchisor, MANUFACTURER, DISTRIBUTOR BRANCH OR FACTORY BRANCH,

(caps are additions)

I think the way Tesla has been doing business in many states is that they have just applied for dealership licenses.

The issue is that in some states (I'm specifically aware of Texas, thanks to http://www.teslamotors.com/advocacy_texas) there are laws that essentially prohibit the manufacturer from owning a dealership.

To help answer my own question, I think I get it, maybe...

"The commissioner shall not issue any certificate of registration authorized by this section to any franchisor, MANUFACTURER, DISTRIBUTOR BRANCH OR FACTORY BRANCH..."

The rest of bill then talks all about franchisors, and mentions manufacturers very little. So perhaps there's something in here that doesn't allow New York to give registration to manufacturers, and only makes rules for franchisors.

Still, this stuff is arcane. It's like reading assembly code.

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