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> "The marketing has been terrible, disastrous. It's such a lost opportunity. For one thing, automotive dealers have done a terrible job in the United States of
by mtgx 10y ago
> "The marketing has been terrible, disastrous. It's such a lost opportunity. For one thing, automotive dealers have done a terrible job in the United States of explaining what electric cars are, they don't have them on the lot, so that's hardly their fault,"
Oh, no. It's definitely their fault, and the fault of the dealers as well. Neither really want EVs to succeed, for the same reason Blackberry and Nokia didn't really want touchscreen phones to succeed, even after they had started selling their own models as well. It's just much easier and preferable to maintain the status quo.
A radical change such as converting from ICE-powered cars to EVs means an almost complete replacement or retraining of their employees, for starters. It also means that previously market leaders have to "catch-up" in technology and performance with early entrants in the market, such as Tesla, that have more EV expertise than them.
It means that they can't compete on "engine performance" anymore (not really), something that has set the car makers apart for 100 years. They will have to compete mainly on things like battery size (which is highly dependent on supplier prices, but also their EV platforms, which as mentioned, is something new to them) and "smart" stuff, like autonomous driving, which is heavily software-dependent, and the traditional car makers don't have that much experience with that either.