Though NASCAR is officially based in Daytona Beach, Florida, the geographic home of American stock car racing is in and around Charlotte, North Carolina, where most of the top NASCAR teams have their race shops. When the state senate voted unanimously to block internet auto sales in NC, since dealer franchise laws there already prevent Tesla from opening its own retail outlets the new legislation would have made it impossible for the company to sell cars there at all. Tesla, in response, has come up with a novel way to lobby lawmakers in a state known for its car enthusiasm: they gave legislators test drives in Tesla's Model S.
"When you accelerate it, it was the same sort of feeling I got when I test-drove a Mustang Boss back when I was probably 23 years old," North Carolina House Speaker Thomas Tillis, 53, a Republican, told the Raleigh News & Observer.
The lobbying-by-test-drive apparently worked, as the bill never came to a vote in the state House.
Tesla isn't just an upstart when it comes to building and selling cars. It's competing with manufacturers that have a century of experience lobbying governments at all levels and with dealers who have spent substantially on campaign contributions.
According to the National Institute on Money in State Politics, since Tesla was founded in 2003, American auto dealers have spent $86.8 million on state elections. The Center for Responsive Politics tabulates dealer contributions to federal campaigns at $53.7 million. Those same sources say that so far Tesla has made less than a half million dollars in political contributions.
"The challenge we face, of course, is that the auto dealers are very strong and very influential at the state level, among the legislatures," Tesla CEO Elon Musk told shareholders in June. Dealers, he said, are "making it harder to get things done."
Tesla Model S at the Texas state capitol. Tesla Motors photo.
Tesla has had a mixed record lobbying state governments. New York's Assembly killed a bill that would have stopped direct sales by Tesla in that state. After initially turning Tesla down amid threats from franchised car dealers, Virginia granted the EV startup a single showroom license. Tesla was less successful in Texas, where dealers outspent Musk's company by a nine to one ratio when legislation to repeal restrictions on factory direct car sales was voted upon. Tesla's company owned "galleries" in Texas can't sell cars, offer test drives or even mention prices.
Tim Jackson, CEO of the Colorado Auto Dealers Association, called Tesla's legislative test drives a "dog-and-pony show" put on for lawmakers. Tesla isn't just putting on that show for individual state legislatures, they also made a Model S available for test drives and sponsored a panel with legislators at the National Conference of State Legislatures annual convention last August in Atlanta.
To defeat the North Carolina legislation, Tesla used some conventional lobbying in addition to the test drives. After the North Carolina Automobile Dealers Association spent $152,000 in contributions to state legislators' campaigns in 2012, resulting in the restrictions on factory car sales passing unanimously in the upper chamber, Tesla hired three professional lobbyists including the former state Republican chairman. The GOP controls both houses of the North Carolina legislature as well as the governor's mansion.
Tesla also arranged for Leilani Munter, an attractive young woman who races in NASCAR and IndyCar development series and describes herself as an environmental activist, to drive a Model S to the NC capitol, talk up legislators and write an op-ed opposing the proposed law in the Huffington Post .
Tillis, who had gotten $8,000 from the car dealer association liked the Model S, as did fellow Republican Rep. Tim Moore, a self-described "car guy". "There were people here who didn't even know there was such a vehicle as this," Moore said, saying that the state House didn't act on the Senate bill because "we just realized we needed to have more of a conversation about what was best for consumers."
On a federal level, where seven members of Congress are auto dealers, Tesla has spent a minimal amount over the past two years while the National Automobile Dealers Association has an annual lobbying budget of about $3 million. Tesla does have an outpost on Washington's K Street, home to many lobbyists, but it's a showroom. It has one registered lobbyist in D.C. a former aide to Senator Feinstein of California. Until now, to get heard in Washington Tesla has relied more upon Musk's star power and the goodwill of the Obama administration, which favors alternatives to the internal combustion engine, than on traditional lobbying.
from The Truth About Cars http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com
Put the internet to work for you.
No comments:
Post a Comment