An opinion piece at Vox argues that "car dealers are awful," and the efforts to protect them against direct sales from Tesla and other manufacturers are misguided.
"Buying a car involves going from dealer to dealer, each of whom has his own inventory.
One guy only has blue paint.
The other guy doesn't have the blue paint, and also only has dark gray seats.
And each has his own fake sticker prices and complicated cash-back offers.
It's no wonder 83 percent consumers say they would rather skip the haggling, and a third of people say doing taxes is less annoying than working with a car dealer.
But it's not just the hassle.
State bans on direct sales turn out to cost consumers an enormous amount of cash.
It's an enormous problem, and it warrants a federal solution.
Cars are the most expensive consumer product that the typical consumer buys.
And while it may seem obvious that cars are expensive due to the material and labor required to build them, the logistics of distributing cars is actually a very expensive part of the process.
Research by Eric Marti, Garth Saloner, and Michael Spence has concluded that as much as 30 percent of the cost of a car is the cost of distribution.
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