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[–] thrus ago 

Those reasons for Tesla some make sense, I'm in MI so historically we had a lot of cars made here and if they could have sold directly out the factory door they could have priced in a way that people in other states would have no way of matching due to low storage costs no dealer and even no shipping costs. Any location with an auto factory near by would have been able to destroy the ability for anyone else to sell near there. Ford didn't want Dodge to have and advantage in some markets and Dodge didn't want Ford to have an advantage in others so they wound up with a process to cut both off and make it fair through a dealer.

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[–] rwbj ago  (edited ago)

Interesting! I wasn't aware of the backstory there. However, I'm still not seeing how that's reasonable at all. Without such arrangements the companies would seemingly have been obligated to build even more manufacturing plants in a wide array of areas. So you'd have more jobs and cheaper vehicles. And similarly companies that wanted to effectively compete would also be incentivized into localizing their production instead of building them in just Detroit at the time, places like Mexico now, and then shipping them out around the world.

This also could have opened up the door to more competitors which is something we've long since needed in the auto market. The recent auto bail out showed they, alongside banks, have now gotten so bloated that they've reached the pinnacle of crony capitalism - 'too big to fail.'

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[–] thrus 0 points 1 point (+1|-0) ago 

Or you just change the price to include a shipping fee for ones not near plants as it would only be direct out the factory sales that they could offer the lower rate on, MI and Detroit especially in the past. We see a feel like delivery or something now a days anyhow on most vehicles. This would have been an issue but a location where there was no plant they would all be on equal footing. Plus this was more of a historically useful rule set when we didn't have the ability to put 20 cars on a semi and run it 60 mph down the highway, it was the era of phones and snail mail, when Henry ford offered vehicles in any color you want as long as it is black. Now you could get a fleet of vehicles from coast to coast in a few days or 2 weeks depending on air or semi for shipping (how much is it worth to you $$$). So modern times negate a lot of this, but I though I would throw out at least one reasonable historical reason for those laws.