Originally published at: Car dealer trade group "heavily involved in writing" Florida's new ban on selling cars direct to consumers | Boing Boing
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When I saw the headline I assumed that the “spectacularly important exemption” was the target of the law.
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So, at least a portion of the population will go to Georgia, Alabama, or Mississippi to buy a car and then re-register their new car in Florida, taking business away from Florida dealerships. 
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That’s quite a specific carveout for DeStains new billionaire buddy.
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Were manufactures, other than Tesla, selling direct to consumers?
If they were seems like a lawsuit is about to happen by manufacturers wondering why they can’t sell direct to consumers like Tesla.
If they weren’t, seems like a law that wasn’t needed.
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… that’ll put ol’ Ron up against Ford now, too, as they’re moving away from the dealership model.
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It enshrines Tesla’s unique advantage in getting away from a model that just creates more costs to everyone else. State empowered protection of business model.
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So apparently car dealership owners are incredibly wealthy (they make up a good proportion of the 0.1%), generally quite conservative, and as people who make most of their money by being unnecessary middlemen, give a lot of money to (Republican) politicians to make sure they legislate to maintain that status quo. They also tend to be seriously anti-electric car, but Musk is a personal friend of DeSantis, so… yeah, this makes total sense.
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This isn’t new. Most states have laws restricting car manufacturers from selling direct. Economic Effects Of State Bans On Direct Manufacturer Sales To Car Buyers
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This law probably comes from the same people from 80’ saying “Pretty soon, it’s gonna be a communist country.”
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It’s not all cut and dried. Manufacturers are keen to pursue the direct model, but for the consumer it seems to offer fewer choices and higher prices.
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Which is central to the fascists definition of fascism
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"this is florida! huzzah!
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Aren’t governments meant to enact laws for the benefit of their citizens? How does this benefit the citizens?
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Generations ago “vertical integration” was considered a threat to market competition
Nobody talks about that anymore, or even remembers why car dealerships supposedly exist
Anybody who’s ever bought a car from a dealer can attest that the solution is worse than the “problem”
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Why would DeSantis punish one of his own?
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Tesla isn’t technically doing it either. They do some trickery to get around the local laws that already exist in every state to prevent factories selling directly to consumers.
This all happened a long time ago. I want to say 1950s or 1960s? There are laws in place that require a licensed car dealership to be in the loop.
During the dot-com boom, a bunch of people challenged these laws and tried to offer direct-from-factory car sales. Most notably Cars.com, but a lot of people tried. They all lost. Cars.com pivoted their business model to more of a standard used car sales system to stay alive. People have been wanting this for decades. It’s not like Tesla was the first to try.
I forget the trick that Tesla is using to get around this, but it’s related to how they have separate delivery sites from their dealerships or something. Someone more knowledgeable here probably has the details.
The Florida law is probably closing some additional loopholes in the existing laws.
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Same with beer. Distributors are the bane of small breweries’ existence.
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There is a growing movement for manufacturers to sell direct, with Ford (iirc?) recently threatening dealerships with no inventory if they continue to massively markup cars with excess fees and deceit. I assume this bill is meant to preclude that, though there are similar laws in other states already (ah, yes @KiltedDad has the linx).
TBH, they don’t really need the dealerships anymore except for certified pre-owned. It’s now easier to go on the manufacturer’s website and spec the car out for delivery; the dealership is doing nothing more than hosting a parking lot and taking a cut.
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Dealerships generally have service & repair services that provide quite a bit of income as well. The markup on official replacement parts is substantial.
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