Will this hurt Christie's presidential bid?
Real Mericans don't drive electric cars.
Strictly speaking, they can still sell the cars, they just have to jump through a bunch of loopholes, and not sell them "directly" to the consumer like they want to. The article notes that the same ban has been passed in Texas, and they're still for sale. They just have to do some weird paperwork where you're technically ordering your car from out of state and then they ship it to you, and if you want a test drive you go borrow the car of an existing owner in your area--who I'm sure get kickbacks or some kind of incentive to occasionally let strangers drive them around the neighborhood, but then again, most early-adopters are desperate to show off their new toy and tell people how great it is, so maybe the kickbacks aren't so big after all...
You order online. The Texas showrooms can't tell you anything, not even the list price. And like clod said, no test drives or anything like that.
The non-showroom in our area is a sponsor of our school's big upcoming Science Saturday event, and they're going to have one on display. It's all about the science, so they can tell you how great it is without it counting as a sales pitch. I bet they get some sales out of it, eventually.
Will this hurt Christie's presidential bid?
I don't know, Texas is too big to offend in the primary but in the general the Democrats could make hay, since they'll lose Texas anyway.