How Auto Dealers Are Muscling State Legislatures Into Barring Tesla Motors “When Tesla came along as a new company with no existing franchisees, the auto dealers, who possess vastly more resources and influence than Tesla, nonetheless sought to force us to sell through them,” Musk said. “The reason that we did not choose to do this is that the auto dealers have a fundamental conflict of interest between promoting gasoline cars, which constitute virtually all of their revenue, and electric cars, which constitute virtually none.”
Musk added that electric cars require much less service than the gasoline cars most people buy, who then have to go to these franchises to get their cars fixed. “There are no oil, spark plug or fuel filter changes, no tune-ups and no smog checks needed for an electric car...Overcharging people for unneeded servicing (often not even fixing the original problem) is rampant within the industry and happened to me personally on several occasions when I drove gasoline cars