Giving a nod to long-established franchised auto dealerships, Gov. Greg Abbott says Texas doesn’t need to carve out a loophole in its laws that would allow Tesla to sell its high-end electric cars directly to consumers.
“Texas has a very robust, very open, very effective automobile sector that seems like it’s working quite well the way that it is,” the Republican told Bloomberg Radio on Tuesday. “If you’re going to have a breakdown in a car, you need to have a car dealership there to make sure that the vehicle is going to be taken care of. We haven’t seen that from Tesla.”
Tesla’s business model is to sell directly to consumers, bypassing the middleman dealers as it does in many states. But a longstanding law bars that practice in Texas.
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Tesla has refused to call last session a failure. The company says it educated more consumers and lawmakers and will continue its fight to enter the country’s second-largest automobile market. And on Tuesday, it said it wasn’t discouraged by Abbott’s comments.
“As a growing company, we are optimistic about the governor’s pro-business position and hope to be selling direct soon,” Ricardo Reyes, a spokesman, said in a statement.
Abbott’s comments contrast with those of his predecessor. Last year, Gov. Rick Perry suggested in an interview with the Fox Business channel that the state’s dealership laws were “antiquated protections” that should be revisited. Those comments came as Texas was trying to entice Tesla to build its $5 billion lithium-ion battery plant here. The company ultimately chose Nevada.
See here for previous Tesla bloggage. They’ve struck out in the last two legislative sessions trying to get a bill passed to change the franchise model, with no one even sponsoring a bill last time. Abbott may be “pro-business” in some sense, but he surely knows where his bread is buttered. It will be interesting to see what if anything Tesla does in the next session.
Texas….where we don’t believe in the free market, rather, we believe in protecting special interests that have a history of providing campaign cash.
If I want to sell tomatoes in Texas, I shouldn’t have to contract with an independent produce company to sell those tomatoes.