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Does the Dealer Association seriously think Tesla is doing a disservice to buyers?
Tesla Motors filed suit in the US district court against Michigan state officials after having been rebuffed in its quest to sell cars directly to customers. The suit asks the court to declare that Michigan’s franchise dealer law violates the due process and equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution as well as the Commerce Clause.
At the time the suit was filed, a spokesperson for the company said, “Solving this legislatively always has been and continues to be Tesla’s preferred option. For the last two years, Tesla has pursued legislation in Michigan that is fair to everyone and that would benefit Michigan consumers.”
Now Jeff Carlson, chairman of the National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) has responded to Tesla’s legal action. Speaking to the Automotive Press Association, Carlson said policymakers should consider what customers want above all else. He is convinced that buyers want lower prices first and foremost.
As quoted in The Detroit News, Carlson said, “They can continue to support the franchised dealers who discount up to $700 … or … they can offer the consumer a vertically integrated model that prices vehicles at retail. The public policymakers are going to go to the consumers and say, ‘Which one do you want, the discounted product or the product at retail?’ I think they’ll make the right decision.”
In support of his position, Carlson cited a 2015 Phoenix Center study that found competition among dealers often results in discounts of hundreds of dollars. He is convinced that, given a choice, car buyers would prefer to do business with a dealer rather than a company that sells direct and does not negotiate prices.
Carlson seems to think that people love to drive from dealer to dealer to haggle over prices like rug merchants in a bazaar. He thinks they enjoy the games, the gimmicks, and the gymnastics buyers have to go through in order to get a dealer’s best price. Endless shuffling back and forth to manager. First pencil, second pencil, the full panoply of tricks and cajolery designed to do one thing and one thing only — avoid discounting the price of the car any more than necessary to make the sale. In the business, it is known as “holding gross” and it is the holy grail of the car business.
Decades worth of data show that people usually buy from a dealer located within 25 miles of home. Nobody wants to drive 100 miles to save a few hundred dollars. They want to buy from a local dealer who will give them good service. Dealers know this and use it parry any suggestion by a customer that they are going to go “shop around.” Some do but most don’t. They do the dance for a little while, then buy the car from the nearest dealer.
The favorite expression in the business is, “It’s not the deal you got; it’s the deal you think you got.” Car dealers negotiate prices every day. Customers negotiate prices once every three to four years. Who do you think is going to win the battle most of the time?
Studies show that most customers hate to haggle. They would rather have a root canal than arm wrestle with a car dealer. Mr. Carlson wants to offer people a choice — negotiate the old fashioned way or pay the price on the sticker. And he thinks the majority of people will choose haggling? What universe are you from, Jeff Carlson?
The arrogance of the franchise dealers is astonishing. They actually believe they are performing a valuable community service and are loved by their customers. In reality, they are an illegal monopoly that is conspiring to keep prices as high as possible.
If dealers only demonstrated a sliver of interest in promoting electric cars, perhaps they would have some credibility. But they don’t. They park their plug-in hybrids and electrics out back. They never charge the batteries and they try every trick they know to switch people away from an EV and toward a conventional car.
Dealers and manufacturers make their living building and selling conventional cars so they have no interest in making less money. They can’t be bothered with plug-ins and electrics. Jeff Carlson is dead wrong when he says customers prefer being raked over the coals by dealers. Ask people what they want and they will tell you they prefer never to have to haggle with a car salesman ever again in their lifetime.
Investor's Corner
Tesla gets its latest short from Michael Burry: ‘Happy it jumped back to this level’
Tesla short seller Michael Burry, the subject of the film “The Big Short,” where he was portrayed by Steve Carell, has revealed he has opened a new bet against the stock.
In a new update to his Substack newsletter in a post titled “Trading Post June 30, 2026,” Burry revealed a new set of bets against Tesla, Caterpillar, NVIDIA, Applied Materials Inc., and the iShares Semiconductor ETF.
In regard to Tesla, Burry wrote:
“And finally I shorted Tesla at 416.22. Happy it jumped back to this level.”
This means Burry likely opened his new short position after the company’s recent rally on Wall Street, which saw Tesla shares sink in mid-May, only to recover to well over the $400 mark. Currently, shares trade at around $427.
The company saw a big Tuesday as shares climbed considerably, over 10 percent. The size of the Tesla short was not provided, nor did Burry give any information on the position’s structure, the number of shares, dollar value, or whether options were used in the short.
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Over the years, Burry has been one of the more vocal critics of Tesla, calling its share price “media inflated,” and saying it was “ridiculously overvalued” as recently as December.
The company has largely transitioned away from being known as an automotive company and instead is much more widely regarded as an AI play, mostly due to its Full Self-Driving efforts, Optimus robot development, and data collection related to both.
This has not pulled those skeptics away from being vocal about their distaste for how Tesla is valued, but there’s no denying that the company is a global force in many things, including sustainable energy, automotive, and AI.
Wedbush Securities is initiating stock coverage on SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX), marking the first comments on the company since it went public several weeks ago. Wedbush and its analyst handling coverage, Dan Ives, are widely bullish on fellow Musk company Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA).
Ives wrote his first note initiating coverage of SpaceX shares on Wednesday with a $190 price target and an ‘Outperform’ rating. The firm believes the company is well positioned off of its IPO because of its wide array of projects, including AI compute power and infrastructure, connectivity projects, and launches.
“We view SpaceX as one of the most differentiated assets within the tech market with a strong footprint across its three core markets, with Starlink driving success with connectivity,” Ives wrote, “Starship launches leading to a demand flywheel and increasing deal flow for its Colossus clusters.”
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Wedbush leans heavily on Starlink, which they say is the “profitability driver given the strength of its recurring revenue base of ~12 million subscribers as of June 5th.” Ives believes Starlink is still in the “early innings” of penetrating the global telecommunications and broadband market, as it only holds less than a 1 percent share. However, this number is sure to increase over time.
It also highlights the importance of Starship, which it says is an “essential layer” of SpaceX’s overall success. SpaceX developing and displaying the ability to reuse rockets is a major cost and reliability advantage “as it reduces the necessary hardware launch costs while generating a feedback loop for future flights to improve their launch flight rate without accelerating capex spend.”
Finally, SpaceX’s recent AI/Compute projects are also very elementary, Ives writes. It is worth mentioning Wedbush said its $190 price target is derived from a valuation forecast that sees the company yielding roughly $2.48 trillion of implied enterprise value.
There are also some factors that Wedbush did not take into account with its initial coverage. The firm wrote in the note:
“We note that there is optional value coming from Starship’s accelerating scale towards sub-$200/kg unit economics, orbital data centers, and enterprise AI monetization as these factors could drive meaningful upside but these face major hurdles, so we do not take that into account with our valuation.”
SpaceX shares are down just over 2 percent today, trading at around $167 at the time of publication.
Tesla has expanded the footprint of a massive safety feature worldwide with a recent Software Update labeled as 2026.20.6. The expansion of the “Blind Spot Warning While Parked” feature represents the more widespread availability of the feature, which aims to prevent “dooring.”
Dooring is when a driver or passenger opens a car door into the path of an oncoming road user, usually a cyclist or motorcyclist. It is among the most common types of cycling accidents, the League of American Bicyclists says.
For this reason, Tesla created a feature that warns occupants not to open the door because an object is approaching. The feature will sound a chime, and it will also delay the opening of the door to prevent an incident.
The release notes state (via Not a Tesla App):
“If you attempt to open a door while an approaching object is detected in your blind spot (for example, a bicyclist approaching from behind) a chime sounds, and your door will not open upon initial button press. Wait a short time and press the button a second time to override the warning.”
Tesla initially rolled out this feature back in 2024 with the Model 3 “Highland.” However, it remained with the Model 3 exclusively for over a year; that was until Tesla added it to the Cybertruck this past Spring.
Now, it is making its way to the new Model Y, 2021 and newer Model S, and 2021 or newer Model X.
The prevention of dooring incidents could eliminate many injuries to cyclists, especially in an urban setting. Dooring accounts for 10-20 percent of bike-related crashes in major cities, and over 17,000 dooring-related incidents were treated in the U.S. over the course of a decade. These usually involve fractures, contusions, and head trauma.
Tesla gets its latest short from Michael Burry: ‘Happy it jumped back to this level’
SpaceX gets initial stock coverage from Tesla’s biggest bull
