Our TOTM colleague Dan Crane has written a few posts here over the past year or so about attempts by the automobile dealers lobby (and General Motors itself) to restrict the ability of Tesla Motors to sell its vehicles directly to consumers (see here, here and here). Following New Jersey’s adoption of an anti-Tesla direct distribution ban, more than 70 lawyers and economists–including yours truly and several here at TOTM–submitted an open letter to Gov. Chris Christie explaining why the ban is bad policy.
Now it seems my own state of Missouri is getting caught up in the auto dealers’ ploy to thwart pro-consumer innovation and competition. Legislation (HB1124) that was intended to simply update statutes governing the definition, licensing and use of off-road and utility vehicles got co-opted at the last minute in the state Senate. Language was inserted to redefine the term “franchisor” to include any automobile manufacturer, regardless whether they have any franchise agreements–in direct contradiction to the definition used throughout the rest of the surrounding statues. The bill defines a “franchisor” as:
“any manufacturer of new motor vehicles which establishes any business location or facility within the state of Missouri, when such facilities are used by the manufacturer to inform, entice, or otherwise market to potential customers, or where customer orders for the manufacturer’s new motor vehicles are placed, received, or processed, whether or not any sales of such vehicles are finally consummated, and whether or not any such vehicles are actually delivered to the retail customer, at such business location or facility.”
In other words, it defines a franchisor as a company that chooses to open it’s own facility and not franchise. The bill then goes on to define any facility or business location meeting the above criteria as a “new motor vehicle dealership,” even though no sales or even distribution may actually take place there. Since “franchisors” are already forbidden from owning a “new motor vehicle dealership” in Missouri (a dubious restriction in itself), these perverted definitions effectively ban a company like Tesla from selling directly to consumers.
The bill still needs to go back to the Missouri House of Representatives, where it started out as addressing “laws regarding ‘all-terrain vehicles,’ ‘recreational off-highway vehicles,’ and ‘utility vehicles’.”
This is classic rent-seeking regulation at its finest, using contrived and contorted legislation–not to mention last-minute, underhanded legislative tactics–to prevent competition and innovation that, as General Motors itself pointed out, is based on a more economically efficient model of distribution that benefits consumers. Hopefully the State House…or the Governor…won’t be asleep at the wheel as this legislation speeds through the final days of the session.