alt Hacker NewsThis is great news. I look forward to a day when I never have to talk to a salesperson again.
> Forty-eight states have laws that limit or ban manufacturers from selling vehicles directly to consumers
Why on earth is this a law? (I mean besides the obvious lobbying efforts and likely scare-mongering from powerful auto dealers) Is there an actual reason/benefit for this though for consumers?
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They were adopted in the mid-20th Century when franchised dealers the norm but manyfacturers would use threat (backed by follow-through if the threat wasn’t successful) of opening direct competing manufacturer-owned dealerships to coerce franchise dealers practices, to take that practice off the table.
> Why on earth is this a law?
Car dealerships tend to be keystone businesses in towns; they wind up with outsized political power on the state and local level.
> Starting today, customers can browse, finance, and purchase certified pre-owned Ford vehicles online through Amazon Autos, with in-person pickup at a local Ford dealership.
This whole thing sounds like dealership with extra steps and a middleman fee.
Vertical integration is, in general, bad for competition and often bad for consumers. There can be benefits, but too much control limits availability of parts, confuses incentives, etc.
Agree. Dealing with Amazon customer support is such a great experience and it keeps on improving every time I reach out to them.
It's true of beer, too. In a lot of states (decreasingly so), breweries cannot sell beer directly to consumers, or even retailers. I once paid for a tour of a brewery, where the price of admission also covered a souvenir glass. The brewery would then give you a few pours of "free beer". They emphasized that they were definitely not selling me any beer.
Wonder if there an opportunity there to set up distribution in the few states that don't have that law and make everything easy online - out of state registration, delivery (for a fee). The dealerships in the 48 states will probably sue the manufacturers, they are not just going to let it slide, I suspect.
>(I mean besides the obvious lobbying efforts and likely scare-mongering from powerful auto dealers)
This is the only reason so far as I understand it.
> Why on earth is this a law?
Generously, protecting local labor is important in an environment that demands labor for survival and where considering alternative systems of providing for people is verboten. This is a confederation-level version of protections against offshoring jobs. Whether the jobs add value or not is its own dilemma.
These laws are anachronisms back when they didn’t want manufacturers directly selling vehicles to consumers because there was a fear (or maybe, an experience?) with manufacturers selling vehicles without any reasonable ability to get parts, repairs, etc.
Nowadays with nationwide fast shipping and the internet these aren’t really problems… but in the 1950s I could see how there would be some benefits to having a dealership near you.