I think you’re misunderstanding the situation. In the Great U.S. of A.™®©, car manufacturers are forbidden to sell directly to customers, and instead are required to go through independently-owned dealerships that act as middlemen between the manufacturer and the customer. This allows dealerships to arbitrarily control how the cars are sold, add unremovable “dealer options”, and that thing everybody loves: markups! The manufacturers have no control over this.

What Tesla managed to do (in some states, at least) is introduce a direct sale model that allows them to sell their cars directly to the customer with no middleman.

Yes, it’s incredibly stupid. Hi, I’m American and I hate it here.