It is illegal for a manufacturer to sell you a car directly in about 30 states. Since it's based on anticompetitive state dealer laws, it is unlikely anytime soon; separate legislation in each state. My brother, ironically a lobbyist, tells me it's possible with federal legislation but congress is not brave enough, and the auto industry too powerful, for them to even try. Alas. It is likely to be this way for the foreseeable future.
This is another problem with the current institutions: improving any little thing can be such an insane slog. Unless it's a hot issue that doesn't really matter and that can get a lot of cheap press coverage.
At some point there was some hope for "lobbying as a service" - for example with EFF or ACLU - but that wave has mostly failed also.
> improving any little thing can be such an insane slog.
One of the possible improvements here is to make procedural changes that nobody in particular sees an obvious need to oppose, but that make good things easier.
For example, make it easier to repeal laws than pass them. Most legitimately good laws have broad public support and would survive. But controversial bullshit that only passed as a result of midnight shenanigans would be gone by the next open session and it would weaken the incentive for omnibus bills because the bad bits could be repealed piecemeal with less than the consensus necessary to pass the omnibus to begin with.
> At some point there was some hope for "lobbying as a service" - for example with EFF or ACLU - but that wave has mostly failed also.
The trouble here is that these organizations can move a certain number of votes, but not nearly as many as large media and tech companies through their control over content on their platforms. So when that's who's on the other side, you have problems.
Which is, in a sense, a technical problem. You could reduce their undue influence through legislation or government action, but that's chicken and egg. Whereas if you get people to stop using their platforms in favor of alternatives, they have less influence, and then they have less control.
There has been a meme for a decade or so that normal people don't care about things tech nerds care about and aren't going to make even minor sacrifices to gain an advantage over the institutions subjugating them. "There is no point in you doing it because you'll be alone." This meme is presumably promoted people who enjoy the status quo, because history is full of examples to the contrary, when people refuse to be indoctrinated into defeatism.
>normal people don't care about things tech nerds care about and aren't going to make even minor sacrifices to gain an advantage over the institutions subjugating them.
I've seen more and more laypeople variously complaining about google and meta doing not-great stuff with their personal info and undue societal influence. Frequently they say 'no one saw this coming' and I always try to rub it in that 'yes the linux[0] guys have been absolutely screaming about this since the 90s but you ignored them because they're geeky and uncool'.
[0]FOSS guys is more correct, but normal people don't know that term, nor would they understand it.
Does the auto industry like dealers? One of Tesla’s two best differentators is its direct sales model. If I could buy a Mach E directly from Ford that would raise its value like 20% for me.
The amount is already being spent — but it's spent in the much more valuable currency of time right now.
Buying a car is a nightmarish process of emailing/calling dealers, making the rounds (often in person) to see what variations/colors are in stock, building spreadsheets of numbers, sanity-checking prices by surfing various online forums, and eventually facilitating your own personal local bidding war to decide which dealer gets your business.
It takes weeks — and, even after that's done, the actual process of physically buying the car is another multi-hour slog of paperwork, shuffling through an endless series of drab fluorescent-lit offices as you physically sign things on literal pen and paper like a caveman. Why?
There's no rational reason that buying a car can't be as easy as buying anything else online. It should be about as much work as ordering a pizza — go to the web site, pick your options, punch in your credit card number, and get a live tracking page that shows your order being put together and then delivered to your door in realtime.
I think most people would gladly pay a healthy premium to have that kind of streamlined experience instead of having to endure their own personal multi-week Homeric odyssey.
Ok, you can pay the healthy premium and streamline the process by removing all of the bits that you’ve deemed necessary but aren’t.
If I asked you to buy a certain vehicle today and gave you MSRP+20%, I’m sure you’d drive off the lot today, with plenty of time to do other things.
I’ve watched someone walk onto a showroom floor and buy a car from the lot like that. It wasn’t too complicated. You’re complicating it if you’re actually willing to pay the premium.
> The amount is already being spent — but it's spent in the much more valuable currency of time right now.
> It takes weeks
This doesn't jive with your willingness to spend 20% more for the same car as a direct sale.
The dealer experience can take weeks if you want it to, because you want to comparison shop and negotiate to the last penny. Some people enjoy this (I hate it).
But if you're willing to pay more, you can be in and out in an hour. Walk to the closest dealer, point at a car and say you want it and will pay the price in the window sticker. Zero searching or negotiating, fill paperwork and drive out. It won't even cost you +20% over the best negotiable price, although you will pay a bit extra for the convenience.
I guess not everyone knows about it, but someone does offer it. On tesla.com you can order a car in about 5 minutes including the time it takes to put in your email and choose a password.
Yes because I’ll avoid markups raising the price and save days or weeks searching for the model I want, comparison shopping, negotiating.
I won’t necessarily stand by 20 if I actually ran the numbers, but if I had an option between a dealer’s 50k and Ford’s 50k+ the dealer would need to get me that car on day one before I would give up and pay extra to Ford.
Same deal with CarMax: Oh you have the car you say you have and it’s the price you say it is and it costs a bit more?
I’d pay thousands more to be able to actually choose the options I want instead of being forced to take packages, especially when they artificially limit choices for no apparent reason.
“Oh, you can have the off-road package OR the heated seats” - why can’t I have both? Just bolt the heated seats into the off-road model!
I hope I live long enough to see sales people eliminated. In solar, they contribute the least to the process yet gobble up 30% of the money. It is a total waste of taxpayer money, adoption would be a lot faster if we got rid of the greedy freeloaders
How is a salesman a waste of taxpayer money?
I'm not a big fan of fakes people. But some do add value. There are a lot of cases were the middleman is important.
In USA people get tax credits for installing solar. The cost of solar has gone down, the cost to the consumer has remained the same or increased. It is sales people eating up that margin, which is being paid for by tax payers
I think it depends on the industry. In a specialized niche (B2B), sure.
In something like new auto sales, all of the information is available online and is usually more comprehensive and accurate than that offered by a car salesman. YouTube probably sells more cars than car salesmen these days (in terms of locating a product that meets your needs and convincing you to buy it)
I don't think anyone is suggesting that salesmen be forbidden, only that it should also be allowable to sell directly. Tesla, for example, has showrooms where people can learn about vehicles and try them out. But they don't order via a salesman whose comp depends directly on how many upsells are made.
