Tesla-- I wonder What Libertarians Think Of The Authoritarians Who Run The North Carolina GOP

I'm in the middle of buying a Tesla. My neighbor swears by his and, to me, it seems like the car least likely to pollute the planet. I have solar energy in my house so it won't even cost me anything to charge up the battery a few times a week. But, I couldn't just walk into a dealership and buy one. I had to do the whole process online. Works for me... but I don't live in North Carolina. I'll come back to that in a second.

The big news about Tesla this week was two-fold; first, many auto magazines are calling it the best care ever.

The new all-electric Tesla S sedan is not just the favorite of car magazines, now Consumer Reports calls it the best car they’ve ever driven, scoring 99 points of 100 and beating out the Lexus LS460 that held the previous record back in 2007. What does this massive battery-powered EV have that no others do?

“It handles like a sports car, it rides like a luxury car, it has the energy efficiency that is twice as good as the best hybrids and is the quietest car we’ve ever tested,” said CR tester Gabe Shenhar. “It does so many things so right on so many levels that to us it wasn’t a surprise.”

Perhaps that’s why Tesla Motors has sold more cars during the first quarter of 2013 than luxury German automakers, Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Audi, prompting the Palo Alto-based firm to declare its first-ever profit and raise expected sales for 2013 from 20,000 to 21,000.

And, second, there was the thing about paying the government back all the money... 9 years early. Wednesday Tesla wired in a $451.8 million payment and, coupled with two earlier payments, paid off a $465 million loan they got from the Department of Energy loan in 2010 to foster development of advanced-technology vehicles. As Steve Benen reminds us, Romney and Ryan attacked Obama consistently for loaning Tesla the money. As usual, they were wrong and trying to politicize sound economic policy for narrow partisan gain. Aside from helping build an all-Americaan car company specializing in a clean-energy approach, the loan netted something like $12,000,000 is profit for the American people.

And that brings us back to North Carolina and the ham-fisted corruption that defines the backward, Republican-controlled legislature there. Car dealerships spend millions on legalistic bribes in local races. And they don't want the competition from Tesla. So where better to turn than the crackpots who run the North Carolina legislature?

A legislative proposal, backed by the N.C. Automobile Dealers Association, would make it illegal for Tesla, or any other car maker, to bypass dealerships and sell directly in the state. The proposal cuts at the heart of Tesla’s business model.

...[T]he proposal was unanimously approved by the state Senate’s Commerce Committee on Thursday, despite concerns about the state dictating who should be allowed to sell an automobile. North Carolina is the latest forum for the clash as auto dealers around the country have mobilized, mostly without success, in legislatures and in the courts to block Tesla’s direct car sales.

“They’re trying to insulate the dealer franchise model from any competition,” said Diarmuid O’Connell, Tesla’s vice president for corporate and business development, who traveled to Raleigh to make a presentation to the committee. “It’s a protectionist move to lock down the market so we have to go through the middleman-- the dealer-- to sell our cars.”

The 10-year-old California company is seeking to upend stodgy electric car design by creating the antithesis of the practical plug-in and an alternative to the complex hybrid. Tesla’s 416-horsepower Model S can cruise 265 miles on a single charge. Just this week Consumer Reports awarded the car a near-perfect score of 99 out of a possible 100 points, gushing about the S’s “world-class performance.” The cars start around $69,900.

...“We care about the franchise system,” said Robert Glaser, president of the N.C. Automobile Dealers Association. “The whole point of the retail system is to protect the consumer.”

Is that the funniest thing you ever heard?

As Will Oremus of Slate put it this week, the bill to ban Tesla from North Carolina "is being pushed by the North Carolina Automobile Dealers Association, a trade group representing the state’s franchised dealerships. Its sponsor is state Sen. Tom Apodaca, a Republican from Henderson, who has said the goal is to prevent unfair competition between manufacturers and dealers. What makes it "unfair competition” as opposed to plain-old “competition"-- something Republicans are typically inclined to favor-- is not entirely clear. After all, North Carolina doesn’t seem to have a problem with Apple selling its computers online or via its own Apple Stores.

Still, it’s easy to understand why some car dealers might feel a little threatened: Tesla’s Model S outsold the Mercedes S-Class, BMW 7 Series, and Audi A8 last quarter without any help from them. If its business model were to catch on, consumers might find that they don’t need the middle-men as much as they thought.

Incidentally-- not that he would be in any way swayed by this-- I couldn’t help but notice that Apodaca received $8,000 in campaign contributions from the North Carolina Automobile Dealers Association last year, the maximum amount allowed by state law. I’ve reached out to the senator for further comment and will update this post if he replies.

There's definitely a dangerous authoritarian streak in North Carolina Republicans and they have been coming up with one crackpot reactionary idea after another-- to restrict voting rights, to target college students, to set up a state religion. They demanded the ocean stop rising and now they're demanding cars not be sold online. North Carolina fancies itself the most progressive state in the Old South. They need to get themselves a new legislature; STAT.