I think this is a kind of ‘broken window’ fallacy - ie unless there is a genuine service being offered then it’s kind of like requiring gardeners to use toe-clippers (ie the local economy are paying extra to hire people to do basically nothing).
> 3. People want to sell/trade their cars in, and Craigslist can be a pain in the ass.
Tesla offers a trade-in program so that appears to be similar in some respects?
I'm not going to argue with you as to whether or not the theory behind it is correct (my feelings on the subject are complicated), but I will point out that there's a major political movement in this country to 'keep it local', that has varying degrees of support in varying levels of government. Regardless of whether or not this desire is correct, whether its organic, or whether its simply manufactured through propaganda - it's present, and it gets acted upon.
> Tesla offers a trade-in program so that appears to be similar in some respects?
Which I address in point #4 - at the point where they start doing a major amount of business in trade-ins, they start looking like... A corporate-owned dealership, as opposed to a franchised one. A lot of the cost savings of 'show room-only' stores go away when you start having to deal with used inventory, scheduling test-drives, fixing cars in your dealership garage, etc.
Obviously, when they were first getting started, their used market was tiny, and none of those business needs/costs were present. But as their cars age/if they ever manage to successfully sell more models/if they somehow manage to capture a major chunk of the overall auto market, their 'stores' will have to offer pretty much every service that a traditional dealership does.
In recent years there has been meaningful investment and growth in Detroit [0], but a lot of auto money is in surrounding areas like Grosse Pointe [2] and Oakland county [1].
[0]: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DETR826PCPI
[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Michigan_locations_b...
[2]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grosse_Pointe,_Michigan
Edit: mentioned Grosse Pointe
1. A national dealership network is at minimum, a soft-guarantee that your car can be maintained/recalled/fixed without you jumping through hoops.
Unfortunately, that soft-guarantee is saddled with all the other baggage of car dealerships. Pushy sales-people, extended warranties, predatory loans, etc.
2. It forces you to buy local, so not all the money flows out of your community, and into Detroit - some of it stays to circulate in your town.
3. People want to sell/trade their cars in, and Craigslist can be a pain in the ass.
4. People like to test-drive cars. People really like to test-drive used cars. See point #3. By the time Tesla starts holding used car inventories[1], and lets local buyers test-drive them[2], their 'showroom' starts looking less like an innovation, and more like a non-franchised dealership, where instead of the franchise owner skimming profit off the top, it just goes up the food chain, directly to corporate.
[1] Which they are.
[2] Which they do.