In the recent decade the automotive
industry was forced to look long and hard in the mirror and ask itself whether
it is prepared for the future. Giants of industry who seemed to be too big to
fail have been shaken by a blow delivered from an unexpected direction.
Electric vehicles arrived on the scene in a way that an asteroid arrives at the
surface of a planet – not the gentlest of landings. Tesla Motors is seen as
that asteroid. While Tesla did not invent the first electric car to enter into
our skies, but it is the first to not be burned up in the atmosphere. Why?
Before (and for a long time during) the first mass produced Tesla vehicle came
on sale, the Nissan Leaf was the world’s best selling electric vehicle. It was
relatively affordable, reliable and easy to live with. But it is now quickly
becoming that choice that every EV buyer has if they’re purposefully aiming
for the bottom of the food chain. It was the significantly more expensive Model
S that created a cult following. Which is odd, because it’s name does not
signal the all-important eco-friendliness thought to be important to EV buyers,
unlike the Leaf, which was called Leaf for that very reason. The Model S does
not have distinctive styling either. You’ll recognise it on the street, sure,
but it doesn’t change that it has the same sedan shape as all things sedan. The
Leaf, on the other hand, looked like an insect that has seen the future of
which he can never speak due its sheer horror. But for all its quirkiness, it’s
sort-of dull. These two cars represent completely different car types and price
segments, but that is not the point. Tesla’s ultimate goal was to make the
model 3 – a people’s car that is priced like a… well… Nissan Leaf. So if Nissan
had a royal flush on its hands, how come they didn’t rake in all the chips? The
short answer – because marketing matters.
You see, people are not kept up at night with the thought of owning a Nissan. They might lust after a GT-R, but the GT-R lives a life separate from other Nissans in the heads of customers. It’s not wearing the Nissan badge on the car, but a GT-R one. That matters. Because that way the customer knows that the GT-R isn’t just a sporty Nissan, it is a group a mad engineers that the executive board fears to say anything about practicality, or economy. They’re all-in on performance. Tesla is known as being all-in on electric vehicles. From day one they embarked on building electric vehicles to rival internal combustion cars on the latter’s terms. They were not making electric cars to save the planet, with all the implied sacrifices. They embarked on making the gas-powered stuff obsolete. That borders on an ideology, which gave birth to the Tesla cult that no electric vehicle before them ever had. The marketing team of each respective competitor has to overcome this now.
