Car dealers in the Peach State filed a petition to the Georgia Department of Revenue and asked that Tesla’s license be revoked and the agency ban Tesla Motors from selling its Model S sedans within the state.
Company’s license to operate in Georgia only allows Californian automaker to sell cars made in accordance with the design specifications that the customer has requested. The car sales are also limited to 150 units per year. The group that filed the petition consists of 500 dealerships, representing the Georgia Automobile Dealer Association.
According to the petition, the electric car maker violated the state’s rules limiting the annual number of the cars sold directly to the public. The petition highlighted that Tesla sold 173 sedans from October 2013 to June 2014 at its shop in Marietta, near Atlanta, which is the only company’s store in the state.
The petition was filed a week ago and Tesla officials finally responded that they hadn’t broken any rules concerning auto dealer licensing in Georgia and called the petition “nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt” to suppress new innovations and limit the consumer choice.
