Lawmakers in New York state are moving to shut down Elon Musk’s Tesla dealerships in yet another blow to the billionaire CEO.
New York State Sen. Patricia Fahy and other lawmakers are fighting to remove a waiver that allows Tesla to operate five in-person dealerships in New York, instead forcing the company to sell their vehicles through dealer franchises, The New York Times reported Sunday.
“No matter what we do, we’ve got to take this from Elon Musk,” Fahy said in March when she first introduced the bill against Tesla. “He’s part of an effort to go backwards.”
She wants the company to relinquish its 5 licenses and instead distribute them to other EV manufacturers, such as Rivian, Scout Motors, and Lucid.
But the reason Tesla is different is that they don’t work that way. For other car companies a rich family buys a franchise license and sets up “Jones Honda”, Tesla isn’t like that. Tesla owns the dealership and that makes their dwaler license different. With “Jones Honda” if they lose their dealership license, the Jones are SOL and Honda is just fine. With Tesla, they’re all essentially “Musk Tesla” dealerships so only Tesla loses out.