I just bought a car. I wanted to pay cash, and made it clear I would come back with the a cashier check the next day when my bank open. They said in order to “lock” the car in for me overnight, that I’d have to sign up for a loan (that I could just pay off immediately). It took a bunch of back and forth to make it clear I just wanted to pay cash and I’d be back tomorrow with a check. They finally relented and said ok we’ll put a complimentary hold on the car and accepted the fact I was paying cash. Then of course after finalizing that they pushed a bunch of vastly overpriced maintenance programs and severely misrepresented the expected costs of said maintenance if I didn’t purchase the plan. At least they had the courtesy to give me the time to quickly run the numbers in order to verify it was a terrible deal for me.

The whole point is that buying a Tesla doesn’t involve this pointless, anti-consumer, borderline lying, slimey process. People shouldn’t have to worry about being scammed when making one of the largest purchases in their life. The traditional dealership model is terrible for your average consumer. Why on earth are you defending that?