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Indiana is back with another bill to ban Tesla’s direct sales model
If a proposed Indiana House bill is passed, manufacturers of “all-electric vehicles” would be banned from selling directly to consumers. The bill does not direct any specific language to Tesla Motors, Inc., but the innovative vehicle manufacturer is clearly the target of the legislation. Add Indiana into the mix of Tesla’s long list of court cases pending in which car dealers and automakers claim that they, as intermediaries, have sole right to sell vehicles to consumers.
Indiana House Bill 1592
Indiana automakers have traditionally used an established network of dealers who negotiate with buyers and provide automotive repair services. These automakers are part of a large umbrella of politically influential groups. They argue that Tesla’s model allows the company to evade laws, which confers an unfair advantage to Tesla and provides no accountability to its buyers.
Here is the synopsis of the Indiana House Bill 1592.
Automobile sales requirements. Provides that a manufacturer may engage in sales directly to the public only if the manufacturer meets certain requirements. Provides that a manufacturer can no longer engage in sales directly to the public after the earlier of: (1) reaching 1,000 units in cumulative annual sales; or (2) six years after the initial dealer’s license is granted.
Additionally, Sec. 20. of the bill reads:
A manufacturer licensed under this article may engage in sales directly to the general public only if the manufacturer (1) has exclusively offered for sale to the general public in Indiana all-electric vehicles on a continuous basis since July 15, 2015; (2) has never offered for sale to the general public in Indiana a line make of new motor vehicles through a franchised motor vehicle dealer.
Tesla is the only vehicle manufacturer which meets these particular criteria. Tesla sells its electric vehicles directly to consumers, while other manufacturers like General Motors, Ford, Subaru, and Toyota sell through Indiana dealerships. If passed, the bill would severely limit Tesla’s ability as a manufacturer to sell to the public:
Subject to the expiration schedule under IC 9-32-11-12.5, a manufacturer can no longer sell to the public after the earlier of the following: (1) A manufacturer described in this section reaches cumulative annual sales of one thousand (1,000) units to the general public from its licensed location in Indiana.
The author of the bill, Rep. Edmond Soliday, a Republican, has authored or co-authored several transportation bills, including transportation infrastructure funding, automated traffic enforcement, vehicle excise taxes, and department of transportation property matters. He defeated Midwest Environmental Systems CEO Pamela Fish in the November, 2016 elections. House Bill 1592 will be heard by the Roads and Transportation committee.
Last year another Republican, Rep. Kevin Mahan, supported a similar bill that would have forced manufacturers to sell their vehicles through a dealership. “For the average Hoosier, purchasing an automobile can be daunting and a big investment,” Mahan said. “A greater variety of vehicles are now available and can be brought directly to consumers virtually anywhere in the country. In the event of a recall or malfunction, consumers should be protected.”
Arguments against limiting manufacturer sales
Tesla Motors, Inc.’s Vice President of Corporate and Business Development Diarmuid O’Connell testified against House Bill 1592. “Tesla does not operate through some kind of loophole in Indiana law,” O’Connell said. “The current law is explicit in Tesla’s ability to sell directly and, as written today, it is not broken.” O’Connell’s remarks point to current Indiana law in which an auto manufacturer is not allowed to open a store in direct competition with an affiliated franchised dealer. Tesla has no direct competition franchise dealers in Indiana and has always sold directly to consumers. O’Connell added that Tesla’s presence in Indiana has “brought only good to the consumer welfare without harming anyone — not even the dealers.”
At stake is more than a corporate tug-of-war between automakers. Tesla’s electric vehicles are at the heart of that vision for tomorrow’s consumer domestic transportation and will continue to flourish and change the way automakers in the U.S. and abroad have conducted business as usual.
If “you’re interested in promoting competition and free market principles … you recognize direct distribution, particularly for a company like Tesla, is critically important,” said Todd Maron, the company’s chief counsel, during remarks at a 2016 Federal Trade Commission event. “We don’t simply believe that [electric vehicles] represent a nice complement to gas powered cars. We believe that it’s imperative that they are replaced entirely by electric vehicles.” An end to franchising laws would advance that goal and place low-mileage gas-powered vehicles at risk of obsolescence.
Arguments in favor of limiting manufacturer sales
A coalition of free market groups, led by Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist, argues that ending or restricting automotive franchising would actually decrease consumer choice. Norquist believes that reducing competition among dealers selling the same car brands hurts consumers. Franchising laws were actually created by anti-trust efforts at the Federal Trade Commission and “they sustain market competition rather than undermine it.” Last year, the group accused federal regulators of ignoring evidence that would undermine proposed measures governing automotive sales that stand to enrich what they saw as a “politically-powerful company” at consumers’ expense.
Harry Tepe, owner of Tom Tepe Auto Center in Milan, Indiana, supports legislation that would further protect consumers in the auto industry. “We just want to make sure there are protections in place for the consumers,” Tepe said. “The issue at hand is that the loophole is still open that allows any manufacturer to come in and market a vehicle and sell directly to the public without having any protections in place for the consumer.” He takes the position that dealerships are responsible for being a liaison between the consumer and the manufacturer.
Lobbying on behalf of the automotive industry
Proponents and opponents of Indiana House Bill 1592 are, in many cases, influenced by a powerful automotive lobby in the U.S. Automotive industry lobbyists use a combination of strategies to gain influence. They do a lot of research, sit down with lawmakers one-on-one, deliver messages in writing, and call Congressmen and members of the administration on the phone.
“If you’re a big company, like a carmaker, and you’re lobbying lawmakers, you’re almost like a pro sports team. You want to get the big names, the most talented, most knowledgeable people,” said David Levinthal, communications director for the Center for Responsive Politics, a non-partisan research group that tracks the money spent in the U.S. political system and its effect on elections and public policy. “So, these big companies, in the major industries, hire former Congressmen and top Congressional staffers and other high-ranking government officials to be their lobbyists, because those are the folks who know who all the other major players are and they know the ways of Washington.”
Source: OpenSecrets.org
Elon Musk
Tesla shows what Roadster drivers will see on screen before thruster activation
Tesla’s Roadster video reveals a fighter jet inspired cockpit with a 5,500 PSI thruster gauge.
Tesla has given future owners their clearest look yet at the cockpit of its next generation Roadster. In a 34 second video posted to X on Friday afternoon, the company walked through the car’s touchscreen with a caption: “Inspired by fighter jet cockpits, Roadster’s interface was designed around the pilot.”
The clip opens on a black screen with red graphics and a 3D wireframe of the car, which sits beside the Roadster’s squared off yoke. Tapping parts of the model brings up controls for the rear wing, including low drag and high downforce positions, along with a charging page with a charge limit bar and a small music player. A row of tabs along the bottom reads Home, Vehicle, Listen, Climate and Navigate.
Most of the video is spent in Track Mode. The dashboard shows a live circuit map, a list of session lap times, brake and motor temperatures, and pressure and temperature readouts for each tire. A setup page lets the driver pick Auto, Low Drag, High Downforce or Custom aero modes, adjust aero balance and brake balance, and switch stability and traction control off. Along the bottom, a status bar reads “Thruster · 5,500 PSI” next to a “Boost Ready” indicator.
That gauge ties the software to the hardware Tesla showed off near Waco, Texas on October 15. The Thrust and Rocket versions use cold gas thrusters fed by carbon overwrapped pressure vessels, and Tesla lists 0 to 60 mph times of under 0.9 seconds and under 0.59 seconds for them, as Teslarati detailed in its breakdown of the three Roadster configurations. The base Performance car relies on a fan and ground sealing system for grip, and the aero settings on screen match the active wings and suction setup covered in our look at how the Roadster generates downforce.
The Roadster layout is a departure from the rest of Tesla’s lineup. Instead of a map centered screen, the Roadster puts the car itself at the center of the home page, and Tesla’s Roadster page lists two smaller forward displays alongside the main touchscreen. Tesla has not said whether any of the Track Mode telemetry will make its way to the Model 3 Performance or other vehicles.
The interface could still change before deliveries. Elon Musk said at the event that Roadster production will begin in 2028, and Tesla says the flagship Rocket version is not approved for public road use. Reservations are open with a $50,000 payment, while Thrust is listed as a limited release and Rocket is invite only.
Those who want to see the car in person will get their first chance this weekend. The Roadster goes on display in the lobby of the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles from October 24 to 27, according to Sawyer Merritt, the first time the public will be able to view it up close.
Elon Musk
Tesla reveals Optimus Academy, where robots teach themselves
Tesla has begun building production quality Optimus robots in Fremont and revealed its training plan.
Tesla has started building Optimus on the high volume line it set up inside its Fremont factory, and the company says the robots coming off it are the first that meet the bar for a real product. “The bots coming off this line are the first production-quality bots that we have manufactured,” Tesla wrote in its third quarter shareholder letter, adding that it has “proven that the current manufacturing process for Optimus is suitable for a commercial product.”
The line sits in space that built the Model S and Model X until this spring. Tesla cleared the old vehicle line in 46 days, as Teslarati reported in July, to make room for robot production sized for one million units a year. On Wednesday’s earnings call, Elon Musk said most of the equipment for that capacity is already in Fremont, with output set to climb toward roughly 20,000 robots a week as the line ramps.
Musk described the ramp as a classic S curve. “The growth of Optimus is an S curve, but the initial curve is a shallow slope,” he said. The team is now refining the robot’s AI, electromechanical design, reliability and service life, and Musk expects that work to be finished by the end of next year, when Tesla plans to start delivering Optimus to outside companies for dangerous, repetitive and around the clock jobs.
The most interesting part of the call was how Tesla plans to teach the robots. Its cars send real driving data back to the AI team from millions of vehicles, but Optimus has no fleet like that yet. “A big difference with Optimus versus the cars is we don’t have this vast fleet of cars from which we can gather training data,” Musk said. Tesla’s answer is an Optimus Academy, where 10,000 to 20,000 robots will practice a wide range of tasks and feed what they learn into the next version of the model. Every unit off the Fremont line becomes a source of that training data.
Smarter hardware is on the way too. Tesla plans to put its AI5 chip into Optimus next year, and Musk said a new Optimus video should arrive within one or two months showing the robot completing tasks driven by AI rather than preprogrammed motions. He took aim at rival humanoid demos that only run scripted routines, saying those would not hold up in the real world.
The supply chain is lining up behind the program. In September, Tesla certified Tuopu, Joyson and Sanhua as mass production partners for Optimus components. A far larger Optimus factory is also rising at Giga Texas, where drone footage from Joe Tegtmeyer showed the steel frame nearing completion, and Musk has pegged that plant’s long term target at 10 million robots a year.
Tesla executives also said Optimus production costs are trending toward the expected manufacturing cost of Cybercab, a sign the robot is being engineered for volume from the start. The hands remain the toughest piece of the design, a point Musk also made at the X Takeover event earlier this month, as Teslarati covered at the time, and that is where much of the current engineering effort is focused.
Elon Musk
The Starship moon landing number NASA and Elon Musk can’t agree on
Musk disputes NASA estimate of 22 Starship launches for Moon landing, predicting 6 to 8.
Elon Musk is disputing a new NASA safety panel estimate of how many Starship launches it will take to put astronauts on the Moon, saying the real number will be less than half the panel’s figure.
On Thursday, NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel held its quarterly public meeting. Panel member Charlie Precourt, a former NASA astronaut, flagged the fueling process for SpaceX’s lunar lander as a major risk for Artemis IV, the mission planned to land a crew on the Moon in 2028. “We need to keep our eyes on numerous required fuelings for the lander,” Precourt said, according to Ars Technica. “I think the last estimate is around 22 flights.”
Ars Technica’s Eric Berger posted the comment on X, and Musk replied. “That’s way too high,” Musk wrote. “Actual number will be more like 6 to 8.”
The disagreement comes down to a basic problem with sending a ship as large as Starship to the Moon. Starship burns nearly all of its propellant just reaching Earth orbit, so it cannot continue on to the Moon without stopping for a refill. SpaceX’s answer is a gas station in space. First, a Starship that works as a storage tank, called a depot, is launched into orbit. Then a series of tanker Starships launch one at a time, dock with the depot and pump their leftover propellant into it. Once the depot is full, the lunar lander version of Starship launches, docks, fills up and heads for the Moon.
Every tanker trip is its own full rocket launch, which is why the count matters. More launches mean more time, more cost and more chances for something to go wrong before astronauts ever leave Earth. Berger estimated that even if SpaceX reaches twice weekly Starship launches by the end of 2027, filling a depot at the panel’s number would still take roughly three months.
How many tankers are needed depends mostly on how much propellant each one can carry to orbit and how much is lost along the way. Starship’s fuel and oxygen are stored at extremely cold temperatures, and some of it slowly boils off while waiting in orbit. More is lost in each transfer. NASA appears to be working from what Starship can lift today, while Musk’s range assumes a more capable rocket.
Musk has pushed back on higher counts before. In 2021, after a government document suggested 16 launches, he called that “extremely unlikely” and said eight tankers would be the most required.
Much of the answer depends on hardware SpaceX has not finished flying. As Teslarati noted earlier this year, the company plans to carry out the refueling process with its upgraded V3 Starship, and Precourt described Artemis IV as carrying “a large number of firsts.” He also praised NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman’s team for working to clear obstacles for both SpaceX and Blue Origin, whose Blue Moon lander does not rely on orbital refueling for its first mission.
Tesla shows what Roadster drivers will see on screen before thruster activation
Tesla reveals Optimus Academy, where robots teach themselves
