A woman in Colorado has been arrested after police caught her with expIosives at a TesIa dealership, police said.
The 40-year-old suspect, Lucy Grace Nelson, was arrested on Monday after the Loveland Police Department launched an “extensive investigation” following a series of vandaIizations at the dealership in Loveland, Colorado.
Insurance isn’t a magic money machine that erases costs; insurance isn’t free money. This is the logic that results in thieves driving small mom and pop shops out of business. Someone will hold up a gas station thinking, “well, insurance will pay for it.” But every time a business makes a claim, their insurance premiums go up. And just like car insurance, if you make too many claims, eventually you’ll be dropped from coverage, or your premiums will become completely unaffordable. You simply become too great a risk for insurance to cover.
Honestly, torching a Tesla dealership is likely the quickest way to get it shut down. If you just let the cars sit there, they’ll keep cutting the asking price until they sell. Teslas might be unfashionable, but plenty of people living paycheck-to-paycheck will ignore the bad optics if it means they get a hell of a deal on a new car.
But if a dealership is burned to the ground? The dealer was probably already resenting being in the business before the arson attack. Most of these guys became Tesla dealers back when Elon had a very different reputation. But now they can’t just walk away; they have contracts, leases to pay, a franchise agreement, and a pile of inventory that won’t sell. Hell, they probably have once or twice contemplated burning the whole place down themselves just to get the insurance money. And now they have the perfect opportunity to walk away, without having to commit felony insurance fraud. Some random do-gooder just came by and did the criming for them. Sure, they could rebuild, but why? They have an insurance check for millions of dollars. They could spend that rebuilding, getting new inventory etc. But why? Why go to all that trouble, just to end up back selling cars people revile?
I think most people in that situation, unless they were already die-hard MAGA types, would simply chose to take the win and walk away. Maybe they stay in the car business and open up a franchise with some other automaker. Maybe they get out of car sales all together. But there’s little reason to stick with Tesla.
That’s the real value of arson right now. There are tons of Tesla dealers who would honestly probably welcome an arson attack against their dealership, as long as no one was in the building at the time. They could never say so publicly, but honestly, an arson against a Tesla dealership might be the best thing that ever happened to many of the dealership owners.
No, you’re wrong here. Tldr, its way more expensive to have an unsold vehicle on the lot floor.
So, I understand it’s not an independent dealership, but it’s a dealership. So, let’s assume there is a $50k Tesla on the floor of the dealership, given Tesla’s slim margins, it probably cost Tesla somewhere around $45k to manufacture. As with most businesses like this, a significant portion of the vehicle manufacturing costs is done using credit, and settled once the vehicle is sold. So let’s assume it’s 50% and $22k is from a loan (it’s higher, but I don’t know what that number is). They pay interest on that loan until they have made enough money from the sale of the vehicle. They pay insurance every month on the vehicle, while it stands there gathering dust. They pay staff, to operate the dealership, with no sales. It’s a crisis!
Now, assume someone burns the car. Your insurance pays out for the car, the building repairs, and any (made up) operating losses from not being able to trade. Tesla makes money back, settles the loan, no more interest. Cash liquidity looks better and you can pay staff and operating costs at the dealership. Tesla also gets to tell investors that they “shipped” another Tesla.
Now, you may be thinking, but what about the insurance premiums. Yes, you burned a few cars. Of the thousands that are insured by Tesla. Insurance premiums may go up a dollar or so per car, but this is the power of underwriting risk, is that any single incident which may leave you shit out of luck, actually becomes really manageable by comparison.
Unless the cars aren’t insured, in which case it’s a crisis.
Also, if the vehicle is discounted to significantly below cost and sold, they stop the cash bleed, but there is a loss, and we can call it community service for being Nazis.
Don’t burn dealership (or sales outlets or whatever the fuck they call themselves), don’t burn their cars!