njlauren
Posts: 1577
Joined: 10/1/2011 Status: offline
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Well, it is Texas, a state where the GOP wanted to ban school curricula based on critical thinking..... And just think if Tesla is successful all the people who would suffer....the jerk in the polyester suit telling you the car in question is rare, so of course you have to pay full sticker price, the finance guy telling you you only qualify for the 12% rate when at a bank it would be 6.5%, the sales manager who when you try to negotiate, continually does annoying things like drop the price by 20 bucks, and then, of course, the service department.. And what the heck would cable tv do without all the advertising from the morons in 10 gallon hats telling y'all to come on down to Honest Al's.... And what would the strip clubs and hookers do if the Texas dealers association no longer had their convention, where all those God fearing texans couldn't have themselves a bit of good, dirty, fun..... Musk is a pretty determined dude and those clowns better watch out, he could end up taking the law in question to the Supreme Court and have it declared an illegal restraint of trade, requiring that cars be sold through dealer franchises may not pass muster if Texas cannot show a valid reason for the law (and there isn't one, there is no reason you couldn't sell cars through a store, dealers provide very little value, other than as a middle man to jack up prices, and warranty work could just as easily be done by certified third party repair centers). I personally would love to see car dealerships go the way of the Dodo, for all the claims of being community staples and such, they are basically the same old crap with a fresh coat of paint, their basic deal is getting you to pay more for a car than you should, by posting ridiculous sticker prices, where an automatic transmission is a 1500 dollar option (even on cars that don't offer a manual!) and air conditioning (that it is almost impossible to buy a car without), and hoping you will fall for that being the 'real ' price, then make you bargain and so forth. At a store the price would be there, and sales people would not be on commission, so you would know what you were getting. On a side note, I got to drive a Tesla about a year ago, the roadster, it is freakishly fast, if i had the money I would buy one. More importantly, what Tesla is doing with batteries is going to become more mainstream, last I heard they had a prototype of a battery that could charge pretty quickly and had a range longer than the current model.....no details, so it could be smoke, but I wouldn't bet against Tesla either. The rest of the indusry is jerking around with electric cars, if they were serious they would be giving research grants to scientists to develop better batteries, rather than buying lithium batteries from the Chinese that are of dubious quality and are ancient technology. If musk had half a brain he would be looking at non hydrogen based fuel cells, using aluminum or lithium with a carbolic acid based electrolyte.
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