Finally, the End of the Car Dealership?

It’s become trendy to mock Tesla in recent years. From the disastrous Cybertruck announcement, to viral clips of exploding cars and Teslas under computer control attempting to drive into oncoming traffic, the company and its egomaniac CEO Elon Musk have lost much of the shine they had five years ago. But as classic American automakers sneered at the nascent electric-vehicle startup, Tesla executed a shrewd business strategy that forwent typical marketing campaigns, and cut independent car dealers from the equation by deploying a direct-to-consumer (DTC) purchasing model for its electric vehicles. However, that move has left Tesla facing an onslaught of legal clashes between independent car dealer associations in many states the company sells cars in.