Photo: Chevrolet
If up until recently there was a battle going on between electric cars as a whole and traditional gas- or diesel-powered vehicles, the two sides appear to have changed now.
On the one hand, there are the old names in the business, the Mercedes-Benzes and the GMs of this world, while on the other you can find the newly formed companies that aim to shake things up a little and change how things are done in this seemingly ancestral car making industry. Of course, you will have acknowledged the fact that Tesla is part of the latter group.
The immense success of the Model 3 took everyone by surprise - Tesla included, even though they're trying to hide it by playing it cool, just like a kid who scores an impossible basketball shot: "what? I meant to do that!" - and now the other actors on the market are trying to readjust. While we've seen what happened at Daimler's shareholders' meeting where some very pertinent questions were asked, it is now GM's turn to react.
Since General Motors happens to have an electric vehicle of its own in the pipe, the American company's reaction was a little more aggressive. In fact, it was the closest thing you could have to a direct attack that doesn't involve naming names. Quoted by USA Today, Dan Nicholson, GM's vice president of global propulsion systems, said during an engineering conference on Wednesday, "I am very proud of the Chevrolet Bolt that’s coming out, which will be the first to market as a long-range affordable battery electric vehicle. It will have more than 200 miles of range and it will be in production by the end of 2016, so it’s not necessary to put down $1,000 and wait until 2018 or sometime after that."
There is one very important piece of truth in this rant: you can never be sure when Tesla will actually be capable of meeting the 400,000 reported registrations for its Model 3. Other than that, if you want to attack your opponent, you shouldn't focus on showing how exclusive its car is. The fact that yours comes out one year earlier is going to be worth absolutely jack to those who are willing to wait to get the better vehicle. If you've got something to say that will get you more buyers, it should be that your car is better than your rival's. But you can't say that. Instead, you can brag about it having the same maximum range, roughly the same base price (the Bolt should be $2,000 more expensive to begin with) and about being styled by a 12-year-old who thinks the first-generation Mercedes-Benz A-Class is a beautiful car.
Fred Lambert from Electrek nailed it perfectly when he said that "GM is making a $37,500 car that would sell for $20,000 if it wasn’t electric, while Tesla is trying to make a $35,000 car that would sell for $35,000 if it wasn’t electric." We haven't driven any of the two cars, but based on what we know so far and on past experience, that seems to nail it right in the head.
The immense success of the Model 3 took everyone by surprise - Tesla included, even though they're trying to hide it by playing it cool, just like a kid who scores an impossible basketball shot: "what? I meant to do that!" - and now the other actors on the market are trying to readjust. While we've seen what happened at Daimler's shareholders' meeting where some very pertinent questions were asked, it is now GM's turn to react.
Since General Motors happens to have an electric vehicle of its own in the pipe, the American company's reaction was a little more aggressive. In fact, it was the closest thing you could have to a direct attack that doesn't involve naming names. Quoted by USA Today, Dan Nicholson, GM's vice president of global propulsion systems, said during an engineering conference on Wednesday, "I am very proud of the Chevrolet Bolt that’s coming out, which will be the first to market as a long-range affordable battery electric vehicle. It will have more than 200 miles of range and it will be in production by the end of 2016, so it’s not necessary to put down $1,000 and wait until 2018 or sometime after that."
There is one very important piece of truth in this rant: you can never be sure when Tesla will actually be capable of meeting the 400,000 reported registrations for its Model 3. Other than that, if you want to attack your opponent, you shouldn't focus on showing how exclusive its car is. The fact that yours comes out one year earlier is going to be worth absolutely jack to those who are willing to wait to get the better vehicle. If you've got something to say that will get you more buyers, it should be that your car is better than your rival's. But you can't say that. Instead, you can brag about it having the same maximum range, roughly the same base price (the Bolt should be $2,000 more expensive to begin with) and about being styled by a 12-year-old who thinks the first-generation Mercedes-Benz A-Class is a beautiful car.
Fred Lambert from Electrek nailed it perfectly when he said that "GM is making a $37,500 car that would sell for $20,000 if it wasn’t electric, while Tesla is trying to make a $35,000 car that would sell for $35,000 if it wasn’t electric." We haven't driven any of the two cars, but based on what we know so far and on past experience, that seems to nail it right in the head.
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