And Now Tesla Is At Risk Of Being Banned In Ohio, Too

Yesterday, New Jersey approved a law banning Tesla from using its direct sales model. Car companies sell their cars through independent dealerships. Tesla sells its cars direct to the consumers, just like Apple has its own Apple stores. Apparently with cars, though, this is not allowed.

While New Jersey was busy banning Tesla, Tesla was meeting with the Ohio Automobile Dealers Association and Ohio legislators, Dan Gearino at the Columbus Dispatch reports.

Ohio has legislation pending that would ban Tesla's direct to consumers model. There's no time set for voting on the legislation.

The meeting didn't seem to produce much in the way of results. The president of the Ohio Automobile Dealers Association said, "I don't think that anything new developed."

Tesla for its part says it's "willing to engage" but it didn't really explain what that means.

Gearino says the Ohio leglistators feel a bit trapped. They don't want to hurt a new exciting company like Tesla, but they also don't want to upset dealers who are part of the community, employ people locally, and let's be frank here, make donations to local politicians.

Tesla is already banned in Texas, Arizona, and as of yesterday, New Jersey.

It seems like CEO Elon Musk is going to have to go to Washington to try to get some sort of federal protection. Fighting on a state-by-state basis seems like it's going to be impossible.