After the recent announcement from Tesla Motors about their plans to set up a network of company owned retail outlets to sell and service the Roadster and future models, some traditional franchised dealers responded in a negative way. First of all aside from issues like pensions and health care, the traditional franchise dealer system may well be the biggest problem that the domestic car makers have. The domestics have far too many dealers and state franchise laws make it difficult or impossible to consolidate them. The number of dealers makes it difficult for car-makers to extinguish dying brands like GMC or Mercury.

In his latest entry on the Tesla Blog VP Darryl Siry responds to a dealer who wrote in to Automotive News to attack Tesla's plans. As we've learned from talking to Darryl and CEO Martin Eberhard, a big part of Tesla's plan to create sustainable mobility is to first create a sustainable business. Given the unpleasantness that generally accompanies a visit to a car dealer, if Tesla can find a way to improve on that to help sell their cars and subsequently help their business survive, people should be praising them for trying something new. Find the rest of Darryl's response at the Tesla blog.

[Source: Tesla Motors]

A new online sales site specializing in hybrid and electric is being launched by Rocket City Automotive Group. People will be able to buy and sell electrically driven vehicles through eEVoutlet.com. Similar to eBay, users will have to pay a listing fee to put their car on the site and can also pay extra for other features to make their car more visible. Sellers can add photos and a streaming video to their listings which can then also be added to eBay Motors, Auto Trader and other sites.

[Source: eEVoutlet.com]

Tesla Motors Chairman Elon Musk has a new post up on the company blog about the thinking behind the new Tesla stores. Martin Eberhard touched on the retail plans when we talked recently, and Elon goes more in depth. He describes the goal as a cross between an Apple Store, a Starbucks and a good kitchen.

It's already been reported that all the Tesla Stores will be company owned rather than franchises like most dealerships. And instead of hiding the garage in back or in a separate building, the shop will be right up front so you can watch what's going on. As a Silicon Valley company it looks like they're following the cues of other tech companies and service technicians will be both company employees and stockholders.

It will be interesting to see how the stock option approach works out in the car business. Tesla has an interesting opportunity with their cold start and they appear to want to try a different approach to car retailing. Saturn tried it in the nineties and it took them pretty far until they were ultimately felled by lack of product. Ultimately it always comes back to that and now that Saturn finally has some decent products combined with the marketing they are starting to show signs of life again. Hopefully the product launch will go smoothly enough for Tesla that we get to see if their ideas work. Read the rest of Elon's blog post at the read link.

[Source: Tesla Motors]