FTA: "Of course, you might ask, who really cares if some luxury-sedan maker has to sell through dealers?"

The answer to this question is one of the more important ones that I find typically under-reported.

The biggest problem with trying to force Tesla to go through dealers to sell their cars is that it is almost guaranteed not to be feasible or profitable. The majority of profit from dealerships comes out of repairs and service rather than the actual sales. They want people to buy a car, drive it for a few years, paying for regular maintenance, and any repairs that crop up, then buy a new car after that in order to get the new features and stop paying for more and more expensive repairs.

Being an electric vehicle, a Tesla has fewer mechanical parts, and a lot less "stuff" to wear out and require breaking down. That is one major penalty to the service model common for existing auto dealerships.

Tesla has committed to providing a service model that does not seek to be a profit center for the company. They specifically don't want to make any significant portion of their revenue from service.

Tesla has also committed to providing over the air updates of the software as well as providing retrofits of new features and updated components such as batteries. OTA updates are free for the life of the car and are delivered automatically. The batteries are swappable with a minimal amount of service work, and that means that existing vehicles on the road today can likely take advantage of future battery technology as it comes online.

So, roll all these things up together and think about how many dealers would actually want to put an amazing looking vehicle in their showroom that:

* doesn't require periodically stopping at a gas station but can instead typically be re-fueled at home overnight

* requires less maintenance

* costs less for the maintenance and repairs that are required

* doesn't become obsolete as quickly due to new software features being delivered for free and new hardware upgrades potentially available at a fraction of the cost of a new car

and then watch as many customers who walk in purchase that vehicle rather than the dozens of models from other manufacturers that don't have those advantages...

A dealership would almost have to exclusively sell Teslas. If they weren't, they'd be hurting their revenue model and competing against themselves.

Unfortunately, until the third generation Tesla comes out, there isn't enough market for the current models to warrant a large traditional dealership just for the Model S (and soon to be Model X). All that is needed right now are the small showroom stores that they are currently using, and there isn't really any significant utility in forcing those to be owned by a different business entity.

When the third gen cars do hit mainstream, it is very likely that shortly thereafter, there will start being stores with outdoor parking lots that have several models on hand ready to be bought and driven away. It is also likely that at that point, it will make sense to have third party businesses own and run those stores. Even then, it still isn't all straightforward, because there has to be some utility for those businesses to exist, and anything more than a modest markup for origination and on-site immediate delivery will require careful thought to prevent major disruption and potential descent into the current hellish system of deceptive markup and aggressive haggling for deceptive discounts that is so common in the rest of the auto dealership model.