Technology
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
Yes I hate Tesla but car dealerships are a scam to get more money out of you. Manufacturers should be able to sell cars directly just like any other business sells their products. It is like being forced to buy an iPhone from a mall kiosk when there is an Apple store in another wing of the mall.
I think the thing a lot of people don’t understand is that not all businesses want to deal with the public. Most don’t because they require customer service. That’s what the dealership offers.
Is this the case with vehicles? Not sure but it’s an aspect that often gets missed.
But shouldn't the individual companies decide if the want to handle that or pass it on?
There’s a lot more to why than just not wanting to traditionally. Just saying that people don’t realize not everyone wants to do business straight with the customer. The professional business to business world is much different and often a lot more efficient since everyone knows what and how to ask for something, customers don’t.
Totally agree but why don't companies have the right to decide that? There are other industries that some companies have dealers but it's not required don't see any difference with cars.
The US has draconian laws around that and I don’t see the manufacturers lobbying to change it. Probably means they don’t want to.
I'm conflicted. These direct sales prohibitions are naked efforts to protect a market segment nobody likes. But, on the other hand, Elon.
Good. Fuck dealerships.
Why are they banning direct sales?
Outdated laws from the dawn of the car industry. Ford and GM were a lot smaller and definitely couldn’t afford to have a show room in every state and market that might be interested in cars. An industry of small businesses called car dealerships was born.
One worry was that an original mom and pop dealership in a particular area could build a brand, and create great business and awareness for a particular brand, only to have that brand open a direct sell show room after all the risks have been eliminated. They campaigned states/local governments to pass laws prohibiting direct selling or more commonly (I think) direct selling within some large radius of an existing dealership for the same manufacturer
How does that work, setting it up on tribal lands? I'm assuming the tribes themselves have to okay that, right?
If that's the case, I'm not sure why that part is a bad thing, unless the tribes are being screwed somehow.
I get that some people see a positive in this, because of direct sales laws. But there are just too many negatives. Number 1, fuck cars. 2, fuck Elon, he doesn't need more money, and it just leaves a bad taste in your mouth thinking about him setting up shop on native land to sell a product that is responsible for the destruction of so much natural beauty.
I got a laugh out of that even though I think you're being serious, maybe just because it's so true. With the software and network integration of cars it's like they're becoming a platform to squeeze as much money as possible out of you. And like commercial software you can buy a car, but you sure as hell don't own it. The automaker is in control.
So yeah, fuck cars. And Tesla is spearheading that approach to automobile ownership so fuck Tesla too. If someone makes a car free of that evil network to maker shit, it's a buy for me.
I know this will be an unpopular opinion, butI don't get all the hate for paying a subscription for additional features. This has been a standard in manufacturing for a very long time. New features require investment in R&D, so it makes sense to me that you would pay extra to use them, even if the vehicle is already capable of utilizing them. The investment in creating new features needs to be offset somehow.