The second time that I have seen Elon get emotional…
At the Annual Shareholder’s Meeting today, in response to a question about the attempts of the National Automobile Dealers Association to block Tesla from selling cars despite an overwhelming preference by consumers to be able to buy direct from the company: “if you look at the opinion polls in any state… the percentage of people in favor of allowing Tesla to do direct sales varies from a low of 86% to 99.
So clearly if democracy was working properly and the legislatures were implementing the will of the people, something else would be happening. And there would not be legislation trying to artificially restrict direct sales.
And right now, the auto dealers association is crowing about the fact that they were able to defeat us in Texas and they are making so much progress in North Carolina and stopping us in Virginia. I think it’s outrageous that they would crow about a perversion of democracy. That’s just wrong.
I think they are making a big mistake. I think what’s actually going to happen is that customers will lead a revolt on this front.”
— Elon Musk, minute 51:54 – 54:17 from the video: http://www.teslamotors.com/2013shareholdermeeting
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