re: Tesla making honest car dealers very angry

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Really? Its a textbook business move. Bill Gates made a gazillion dollars doing it. Freeze out the competition, until they can't afford to compete. He even lost in the Supreme Court, but was so entrenched that it didn't matter

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Bill Gates made his money by being a good businessman. Microsoft had spent zero dollars on lobbyists by the time the antitrust stuff came about, and Gates was still against hiring lobbyists. Only when he realized there was no other way to go about it did Microsoft start lobbying. Microsoft played the legal game because they were forced into it for survival. All Gates wanted was the freedom to distribute software the way he wanted to distribute it. Microsoft is Tesla in this scenario, the opposite of what you intended. What these dealers are doing is a chump move, and shows a total lack of confidence in their business model.

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Tesla looks like its on the way out. The automakers have checkmate. Once they got Texas, everything else will be rinse, lather, repeat

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On the way out? They are still receiving orders faster than they can fulfill them. They are pushing as many units of plug-in vehicles as Chevy and Nissan are, despite being priced much, much higher. On the luxury/sport front, they are selling more units than similarly-priced vehicles from car manufacturers that have been in business for a century, and that aren't closing up shop anytime soon.

And there's another huge thing in Tesla's favor: the cost to produce traditional cars typically stays the same or increases, while the main cost to produce Tesla's cars (the batteries) will continue to drop at a rapid pace.

Checkmate? Not even close.