It may soon be illegal to buy a Tesla car in North Carolina
slate.comIf you’re not familiar with Tesla cars, they’re pricey electric cars which have lately been out-selling comparable Mercedes, BMW, and Audi models. And yes, it’s Tesla as in that Tesla.
Tesla also sells its cars in a unique way: They don’t use dealerships. Instead, Tesla has stores where employees can tell you all about the sample models they have on site, but cannot discuss purchasing details or let you take a test drive. Buyers order the car directly from the Tesla website, which saves a lot in dealership fees and makes the electric cars far cheaper.
The problem is that some states, like North Carolina, want to make this model of car sales illegal.
Not coincidentally, the sponsor of NC’s particular bill got $8,000 in campaign contributions from a car dealer association last year.
The free market this is not — in fact, it’s blatant corruption.
Tesla should be able to sell its cars however it pleases, so long as company and purchaser alike are satisfied, whether that involves cutting out the dealer or requiring purchasers to play laser tag on trampolines or anything in between.
Gas stations to serve "quick electric recharges"
Amid the growing trend of more economical hybrid and electric vehicles, and less demand for gas, a major Japanese gasoline companies (Idemitsu, Cosmo, and JX Steel & Oil, and Showa Shell) will start testing the market for “quick electric recharge” service for electric cars at their gas stations.
They plan to incorporate this new experimental service in 30 gas stations in Tokyo and Kanagawa prefectures by the end of March. They will place the common EV logo for this service at the participating gas stations, and customers holding any EV-recharge card which was issued by one of the gasoline companies will get an unlimited electric recharge service at any station for about 3,000 yen per month.
All the companies will install the unified recharge system, and launch the common home page to introduce the recharge station locations and availability. Through this experiment, they will study the profitability and customer demand for this service to consider for the additions in the future.
The gas stations will have to adopt to the projected future where the energy efficient vehicles dominate the streets to survive.
