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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.
Tesla revealed a major new Cybercab detail in a guide it released for First Responders, showing new territory in its beliefs and intentions for the ride-hailing-focused vehicle that entered production in April.
The First Responders Guide is released to give fire departments, paramedics, and other emergency personnel the proper guidance on what to do in the event of an accident, entrapment, or other situation that would require immediate attention.
On one of the pages of the First Responders Guide, Tesla revealed a stark detail about the Cybercab, which could help personnel enter the vehicle more easily in case of an emergency.
Tesla Cybercab has one important piece that AI4 cars might need for FSD
It shows Tesla has no intention of releasing any Cybercab units that were initially proposed for ride-hailing services for the general public with any manual controls, meaning a steering wheel or pedals:
“A Cybercab equipped with steering wheel, brake pedal, and an acceleration pedal is typically an engineering or test vehicle, and operates at SAE Level 2 autonomy. Cybercab is not typically equipped with a steering wheel or acceleration and brake pedals.”
New official Cybercab documentation from Tesla:
“A Cybercab equipped with steering wheel, brake pedal, and an acceleration pedal is typically an engineering or test vehicle, and operates at SAE Level 2 autonomy. Cybercab is not typically equipped with a steering wheel or… https://t.co/P6ut1mZyzr pic.twitter.com/yq6skl9s2J
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) June 27, 2026
This is a major development for those who continue to believe Tesla planned to release the Cybercab with any sort of manual controls so that passengers could take over if needed. However, when Tesla started manufacturing production versions of the Cybercab in Giga Texas earlier this year, they were spotted without a steering wheel or pedals.
It essentially confirms the company has no intentions of bringing manual controls to the car’s production versions. Some have argued that the likelihood of Tesla having something
There still are some Cybercab units out there with a steering wheel and pedals, and as Tesla said, these cars are engineering or test vehicles, which have Safety Monitors on board to help the car out of a precarious situation or emergency.
Tesla released the Full Self-Driving v14 ‘Lite’ suite to owners of Hardware 3 or AI3 vehicles today, adding several new features to the vehicles that were once believed to be capable of unsupervised self-driving.
Now, Tesla has released this modified suite to older Tesla vehicles, adding plenty of new features and capabilities.
Here are the full release notes for the suite:
- Distilled the intelligence from HW4 V14 into HW3. This allows HW3 to directly learn how to handle scenarios using HW4 V14 as a guide. This process unlocks the improvements that have been made to HW4 including Reinforcement Learning (RL) and offline models for HW3.
- Improved both proactive and reactive responsiveness across a wide variety of categories including navigation handling, merges and forks, pedestrian interactions, traffic lights, and vehicle cut-in scenarios.
- Improved general comfort in nominal scenarios through fewer false slowdowns, smoother steering and more consistent lane centering.
- Introduced parking, unparking, and reversing capabilities.
- Added Arrival Options for you to select where FSD should park: in a Parking Lot, on the Street, in a Driveway, or at the Curbside.
- Speed Profiles are now available at all times, to further customize driving style preference.
These improvements, according to Tesla’s Head of AI, Ashok Elluswamy, help distill the driving behavior from AI4’s v14 series into both the camera and compute configurations of AI3.
Tesla Full Self-Driving v14 ‘Lite’ for older cars finally gets released
He added:
“It includes destination options and speed profiles on city roads, but more importantly significantly improved safety. We hope you’ll enjoy it, once the build ships wide.”
FSD v14 Lite is now rolling out to AI3 early-access customers. Based on the feedback, will rollout to more customers over the next few weeks.
This build distills the driving behavior from AI4’s v14 series into both the camera and compute config of AI3. It includes destination…
— Ashok Elluswamy (@aelluswamy) June 29, 2026
Tesla will continue to roll out the v14 Lite suite more widely in the coming weeks, the company said.
Tesla has finally released its Full Self-Driving v14 ‘Lite’ suite for older cars that equip the Hardware 3 or AI 3 chip, which have not been able to handle the newest versions of the company’s driver assistance software.
Tesla officially started releasing the v14 Lite suite to owners in the Early Access Program last night. The company’s Head of AI, Ashok Elluswamy, said that the rollout will continue over the next few weeks. The build distills the driving behavior from AI4’s v14 series into both the camera and compute configurations of an AI3 car.
🚨 Tesla is releasing v14 Lite for AI3 owners who are in early-access
This will give AI3 cars the ability to experience new FSD features like parking preferences. https://t.co/pp6Q5FOKoz pic.twitter.com/tqexMB8SVy
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) June 29, 2026
It also includes a variety of new features that were available to AI4 cars running v14, including:
- Start Self-Driving from Park
- Arrival and Parking Options
- Speed Profiles
The release is highly anticipated because those owners with AI3 vehicles were early adopters into the FSD platform and were promised that their cars would be capable of achieving Full Self-Driving.
However, Tesla CEO Elon Musk admitted during the company’s recent Q1 Earnings Call that these vehicles would not be capable of achieving unsupervised Full Self-Driving, which is what Tesla had originally said.
Owners were not pleased with this answer, or the idea that their commitment to buying the suite outright for thousands of dollars would not yield the ability to drive without operating the car. Tesla gave some solutions for this, including a discount on a new car, or an upgrade to an AI4 or AI5 self-driving computer and new, upgraded cameras.
Tesla owners do not seem pleased with these options, as they require giving the company more money.
Nevertheless, it is important to note that Tesla came through for owners here by releasing v14 Lite before the end of Q2, something it had promised owners during the previous Earnings Call. Tesla has had trouble keeping up with timelines, but this is a big achievement for the team.
Tesla reveals huge Cybercab detail in new guide for First Responders
Tesla Full Self-Driving v14 ‘Lite’ Release Notes: new capabilities and features
