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Tesla, Rivian still face complicated direct sales laws across U.S. states
Executives from both Tesla and Rivian have commented on the decades-long fight to overturn direct vehicle sales bans across many U.S. states, reigniting a long-held conversation in the electric vehicle (EV) community about dealership policy lobbying groups and online sales models.
Tesla has managed to side-step direct sales bans in many states through legal loopholes such as leasing-only models, processing purchases as out-of-state transactions, or simply opening stores in exempted tribal territories where the company’s stores will be exempt from dealership mandates. In other states, the company is still completely prohibited from selling vehicles, such as in Louisiana, where a U.S. appeals court just upheld Tesla’s right to sue the state over the direct-sales ban in August.
In Connecticut last July, Tesla managed to open a store on sovereign Mohegan tribal land, effectively side-stepping the U.S. state’s ability to prohibit direct sales. The Connecticut Automotive Retailers Association (CARA), a dealership lobbying group, immediately spoke out against the decision, though it gained support from Governor Ned Lamont.
Elsewhere, Tesla, Rivian, and many others sporting a direct sales model also face state store limits, and some executives have recently highlighted the decades-long fight to overturn these kinds of laws.
Other states have bans on service centers, storefronts, or both, while some only allow Tesla to sell vehicles online, though they must make deliveries through a service center. The latter includes Texas, where Tesla’s headquarters is located and where it operates a U.S. Gigafactory. As for Rivian, it faces a similar situation through its Seattle retail “Space,” since company representatives are prohibited from sharing specific details on prices or receiving orders.
As such, the state-to-state laws can be difficult for EV companies like Tesla and Rivian to wade through and operate under, so it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise when they point to dealership lobbying practices that keep them in place as being bad—or to their local teams who are working on overdrive.
Rivian CEO on state-to-state dealership laws
In a report published on Thursday, Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe said that dealership franchise laws were “as close as you can get to corruption,” as stated during a discussion with InsideEVs about whether Rivian’s recent Volkswagen partnership could let the startup work through VW dealerships. The report has reignited long-held discussions about states where Tesla, Rivian, and others aren’t allowed to operate—and seemingly due to powerful lobbying from dealership groups.
“Unfortunately, in the United States, it’s not an easy question,” Scaringe said as to the proposition of selling through VW’s dealers. “We have this horrific state-by-state level of rules that are as close as you can get to corruption.
“I think you essentially have, like, lots of dealers have paid for laws that make it really hard for us to interact directly with the consumer,” the Rivian CEO adds.
RELATED: Tesla granted license for direct vehicle sales in Kentucky
Tesla VP of Finance on state-to-state dealership laws
As a follow-up to the story, Tesla VP of Finance Sendil Palani shared his thoughts in a post on Saturday, praising the company’s local teams in states where direct sales are actively banned:
Tesla has been pursuing the direct-to-consumer model for two decades, and it has been an enormous challenge to pursue what we believe is the best model for customers.
I spent a portion of this past week visiting our Northeast region, and was reminded about how these laws are among our most prominent challenge for Sales and Delivery. Local teams make a heroic effort across the entire customer journey: from allowing customers to learn about our product at non-licensed locations while observing restrictions on sales activities, to managing a large flow of deliveries through a small number of licensed locations, to ensuring that we can properly perform vehicle registration paperwork for multiple states and customer circumstances at each licensed location.
Our customers have to make heroic efforts of their own, from traveling long distances to pick up their vehicle to patiently enduring any kinks in the process.
Sadly, this is common throughout much of the country, resulting in higher costs and a worse customer experience for the affected regions.
U.S. states with bans on direct sales models like at Tesla, Rivian
- Alabama (includes service centers)
- Arkansas
- Connecticut (leasing is allowed; tribal land loophole)
- Iowa
- Kansas (includes storefronts)
- Kentucky
- Louisiana (Tesla allowed through special license, “service center” model)
- Nebraska
- New Mexico (includes service centers; tribal land loophole)
- Oklahoma
- South Carolina (includes service centers)
- Texas (Tesla sells through online loophole, “service center” model)
- West Virginia (includes storefronts)
- Wisconsin
U.S. states with store limits on direct sales models like at Tesla, Rivian
- Illinois (limited to 13)
- Maryland (limited to 4)
- Mississippi (limited to 1)
- New Jersey (limited to 4)
- New York (limited to 5)
- North Carolina (limited to 6)
- Ohio (limited to 3)
- Pennsylvania (limited to 5)
- Virginia (limited to 5)
What are your thoughts? Did I miss anything, or do you have a story or opinion to share regarding direct auto sales? Let me know at zach@teslarati.com, find me on X at @zacharyvisconti, or send us tips at tips@teslarati.com.
DOJ echoes Tesla argument in Louisiana direct sales appeal
Elon Musk
SpaceX (SPCX) IPO is live today at $135: Here’s exactly what you need to know
SpaceX priced its historic IPO at $135 per share today, raising a record $75 billion.
SpaceX officially priced its initial public offering at $135 per share, offering 555,555,555 shares of Class A common stock and raising $75 billion in what is the largest IPO in stock market history. Shares are set to begin trading on the Nasdaq Global Select Market on Friday, June 12, under the ticker symbol SPCX. The previous record holder was Saudi Aramco’s 2019 offering at $29 billion, followed by Alibaba’s $22 billion offering in 2014.
At $135 per share and roughly 555.6 million shares, the implied valuation sits near $1.75 trillion, which would make SpaceX roughly the seventh largest company in the United States, just above Tesla’s current market cap. Regular investors can request shares at the IPO price through Robinhood, Fidelity, Charles Schwab, SoFi, and E*TRADE, though the deal is heavily oversubscribed and most retail allocations will be partial or unfilled. Once trading opens June 12, anyone with a brokerage account can buy SPCX on the open market.
SpaceX’s amended S-1 is sparking a major Tesla merger conversation
The valuation is anchored primarily by Starlink. Starlink crossed 10 million subscribers as of February 2026 and is adding 750,000 to 1.5 million new users per month, with the connectivity segment already posting a $1.19 billion profit last quarter. The offering also bundles in xAI following SpaceX’s all-stock merger earlier this year, adding Grok and the Colossus supercomputer to the investment thesis. As Teslarati reported, Starlink ended 2025 with $10 billion in revenue, a figure analysts project could reach $24 billion by end of 2026.
Wedbush analyst Dan Ives has been vocal in his support. “I think the time is right,” Ives said, adding that the offering expands the Elon Musk ecosystem rather than competing with Tesla. An average 12-month price target of $165 per share represents roughly 22% upside from the IPO price. Not everyone agrees – Motley Fool noted xAI is spending $1 billion per month playing catch-up to OpenAI and Anthropic.
Musk founded SpaceX in 2002 with a single stated purpose. “Elon founded SpaceX with a goal to change humanity, to make us a multi-planet species,” CFO Bret Johnsen said in the company’s retail roadshow video this week. Musk himself has been more direct: “We are building the systems and technologies necessary to provide global connectivity on Earth and beyond, to understand the true nature of the universe, and to extend the light of consciousness to the stars.”
Investor's Corner
Tesla unfolded its first European “folding Supercharger”
Tesla’s folding Supercharger just arrived in Europe and it changes how fast charging expands.
Tesla’s Folding Unit Supercharger has officially landed in Europe, with the company teasing a new installation in its effort for a broader rollout targeting major motorway rest stops across the European continent in Q3 2026. The arrival marks a notable shift in how Tesla is thinking about network expansion, moving from hardware performance alone to engineering the logistics chain itself.
While Tesla did not reveal the exact location for the new folding Supercharger in Europe, the photo shared on X heavily suggests that this maybe somewhere in Norway. Historically, whenever Tesla rolls out an entirely new infrastructure architecture in Europe, whether it was the original Supercharger stalls years ago or these brand-new modular V4 “Folding Units”, Norway is almost always the designated launch pad because of its unmatched EV adoption rate and supportive infrastructure
The Folding Unit, introduced in March 2026, is a factory pre-assembled V4 charging station built on an industrial hinge system mounted to a heavy-duty concrete base. The entire assembly arrives on site ready to unfold and connect. Tesla confirmed the units feature telescopic light poles specifically designed for easy transportation and fast on-site deployment, a detail that signals how carefully the logistics chain has been engineered alongside the hardware itself. The design allows 33% more stalls per delivery truck, cuts installation time roughly in half, and reduces overall deployment costs by more than 20% compared to traditional installations.
Tesla’s newest “Folding V4 Superchargers” are key to its most aggressive expansion yet
Tesla also noted telescopic light poles which provide benefits over traditional Supercharger installations that require fixed-height poles that are awkward to ship, slow to position on site, and often require separate crews and equipment to erect before charging hardware can even be staged. By engineering poles that compress for transit and extend on arrival, Tesla has removed one of the quieter bottlenecks in the physical deployment process. Every hour saved on a light pole installation is an hour redirected toward getting stalls energized. At scale, across dozens of new sites per quarter, those hours add up to a meaningful acceleration in how quickly a location goes from approved permit to serving its first customer.
Each Folding Unit pairs a single V4 power cabinet with eight charging posts. The V4 cabinet delivers up to 500 kW per stall for passenger vehicles and up to 1.2 MW for the Tesla Semi, supporting twice the stalls per cabinet at three times the power density of its predecessor. Longer cables make every new station immediately usable by non-Tesla vehicles, a priority as Tesla continues opening its network to Ford, GM, Rivian, Hyundai, Stellantis, and others.
As Teslarati reported when the Folding Unit was first unveiled, Tesla’s Gigafactory New York produced its final V3 Supercharger cabinet in March 2026 after more than seven years and 15,000 units, completing a full pivot to V4 production. The European arrival of the folding design is the next chapter in that transition.
Faster and cheaper deployment means Tesla can justify building in markets and corridors that were previously too expensive to serve, filling the coverage gaps that have slowed EV adoption outside major urban centers.
First Folding Unit Superchargers in Europe 🇪🇺 https://t.co/KNfYWJukkL pic.twitter.com/YR1udIpH1i
— Tesla Charging (@TeslaCharging) June 10, 2026
Tesla has stunned by gaining yet another approval for its Full Self-Driving suite in Europe, its second in two days and its fifth overall.
Belgium will be the latest country to allow Tesla owners to utilize FSD on public roads in Europe, joining a quickly growing list that started with the Netherlands, Lithuania, and Estonia.
On Tuesday, Denmark announced its approval of the FSD suite, which has now been followed by Belgium just one day later.
The country’s Minister of Mobility, Annick De Ridder, announced the approval on her X account, stating that she had just signed the approval of Tesla FSD. It now goes to the country’s homologation department for the last step of the approval process.
De @Tesla community houdt hier al geruime tijd de vinger aan de pols over de toelating voor de FSD-technologie op onze Vlaamse en Belgische wegen.
Uit waardering voor jullie niet-aflatende interesse (en aanmoediging 😉), krijgen jullie hierbij de primeur: ik heb net de toelating… pic.twitter.com/Yrps4OHTj8— Annick De Ridder (@AnnickDeRidder) June 10, 2026
The Belgian approval is one of mighty importance because it truly shows how quickly countries in Europe could greenlight the FSD suite consecutively. Approvals are already coming in relatively quickly, which is a great sign.
Perhaps the next big development that could come from FSD approvals in Europe is an approval from a country like England, Italy, France, Spain, or Germany. It would be something to see how FSD would perform in a major European metro, such as London, Barcelona, Madrid, Paris, Rome, or Berlin.
Getting Full Self-Driving in Spain and England will be such huge milestones for Tesla. I am so excited to see how FSD performs in Madrid, Barcelona, and London, specifically.
The ultimate test will always be Mumbai or New Delhi. Excited for India’s eventual approval! https://t.co/paw9Ch1qmL pic.twitter.com/9RdDERVSSJ
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) June 9, 2026
Full Self-Driving does an excellent job of roaming around major U.S. cities like New York and Los Angeles, but other high-profile international cities of significance would truly mark a line in the sand for Tesla, which can simply enable any vehicle in its customer-owned fleet to run FSD with the correct approvals.
SpaceX (SPCX) IPO is live today at $135: Here’s exactly what you need to know
Tesla unfolded its first European “folding Supercharger”
