With all the news about GM these days, I'm intrigued by the near-constant use of the forthcoming Chevy Volt (pictured to the left) electric vehicle as a proof-point of the continued viability of the firm. Of particular interest me, from a marketing innovation standpoint, is the promotion of the 40 mile battery range before needing the gas engine (a 1.3 liter, three cylinder model that keeps the electric motor running, but does not recharge the batteries). It seems like GM trots out that range with pride every time the need to bolster their innovation cred arises. (Which appears to be frequently.) To boil it down to unflattering simplicity, it is like putting a gas-powered generator on the back of a golf cart, and using that to power the vehicle once the batteries are dead.
I am intrigued by the premise of an electric car. However, it seems that the chemistry of energy storage is giving gasoline a bit of a leg up on the Lithium-Ion cell. For under five bucks, you can buy enough stored energy (yes, gas) to push around just about any current vehicle for forty miles. Heck, you can do that for under two bucks for some vehicles!
But I digress. In addition to the Chevy Volt, there is another electric car out there, and it is a true electric car (no gas motor). It is the Tesla Roadster (pictured below). Here is a little comparison of the two vehicles:
Tesla Volt
Price $109,000 $40,000-ish
Power (HP) 248 150
Recharge time 3.5 hrs 3.5 hrs
Battery weight 992 lbs. 375 lbs.
0 - 60 mph <4 secs 8-9 secs
Battery rating 53 kWh 16 kWh
Range (miles) 244 40
What this table doesn't include is company image, or the brand. (It also doesn't include sales projections, because I can't find any for the Volt. The Tesla is a low production vehicle, in the 1,000 - 2,000 range, but is sold out with a waiting list for 2009.)
Strategically, GM could have chosen to roll out this car as a high-performance, technology-laden marvel with a stunning design, perhaps under the Cadillac brand. Instead, they chose to roll it out as an everyday kind of car, under the Chevy label. And it looks like a Camry. Or Accord. Or Malibu. Not distinctive, in other words.
Also strategically, they chose to highlight the 40 mile battery range. I don't know about this. When my car gets to the point when there is only 40 miles of range left, which is well after the little yellow light comes on, I panic. My trip computer -- which tells me how many miles I have remaining in the tank -- stops making predictions when 50 miles remain. It just blinks instead.
If for some reason I drive home with that little range, I don't sleep well if I have anywhere to go the next day. I hope that there is enough gas to get the nearest station. Buying a car where that kind of range is when the electricity tank is full doesn't seem inspiring. I wonder what kind of ad campaign will support this "feature". ("Don't worry, you've still got gas"?)
Contrast this with the Roadster: 244 miles. It looks like Tesla put in two-and-a-half times more batteries (measured by the pound), got three times the energy and six times the range, and threw away the gas engine. I realize there might be more to it than that, but that's what jumps out at me. Why didn't GM make that decision?
Look at that table again. Yeah, the Tesla is expensive, but it will come down. It'll probably be like the iPhone -- really expensive at first, but then coming down to pretty expensive, and then perhaps to expensive. Like a Corvette. Funny I should mention that car -- it has performance specs very similar to the Tesla, but it does so motivated by a 7 liter, 436 horsepower V8 engine getting (a surprising) 20-ish mpg (Z51 model, around $60,000). And there is another model (the ZR-1) that uses various enhancement technology to achieve slightly better specs at a price of about $110,000. So GM (even Chevy) knows how to play at these price and performance levels. Presumably, Tesla is profitable at this price, what with it being the only product the company sells.
It seems like a great management team, presented with a technology like this and a company with the resources of GM, would do this: Start with a high performance technology, and let it find it's way into more pedestrian vehicles. Start with something to really crow about -- an all-electric vehicle with eye-popping performance, drop-dead looks, and let the halo spread over the rest of the company. Or they could get on private jets and go ask the federal government for a bailout.
Update 12/10/08: The editorial cartoonist Pat Oliphant apparently agrees with me that the professed 40-mile range is somewhat underwhelming:
The gas motor does not drive the powertrain at all, it charges the battery by running a generator. The battery drives the powertrain.
Posted by: Will | September 18, 2009 at 05:54 PM