Comment by WorldMaker

Yeah, Ford realized that early on and had once raised the idea of building their EV division as a direct-to-consumer more directly competitive as a Tesla-rival, but as soon as that news floated the dealers had a fit and one of Ford's ancient problems is that the dealers are also often its largest shareholders. That's been a recipe for Ford's many little disasters since 1919 (where the Dodge Brothers were dealers and shareholders and convinced US courts to force Ford to pay more profits to shareholder dividends than reinvest in R&D, those dividends then helping to finance the Dodge Brothers' next business, the Ford rival Dodge; the terribly broken concept of "fiduciary duty to shareholders" comes almost directly from that 1919 lawsuit, if you've ever wondered how American businesses became the quarterly-focused way that they are instead of longer horizon focused).