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Comment by danhak | Hacker News Reader

Why, in your opinion, is GM’s Chevy Bolt still being outsold by the Tesla Model S?

Also FYI “electric engines” are not a thing.

My arm chair opinion as a millennial that rides a bicycle to work every day, knows nothing about cars, and has no interest in buying an electric car any time soon:

The Bolt looks like a great car for a dorky family man while the Model S is a totally different market. Families have different needs than luxury car owners, and it's likely that these needs are not being effectively met by EVs such as the Bolt despite the a universal consensus that from car critics that the Bolt is an exceptionally good vehicle.

Funny thing, for a family car I think the Model S is perfect, and every other electric car is too small. We're on our second Chrysler 300, just because I can't find another similarly sized, similarly performing car that's half as good for that kinda money. A model S would cost twice as much, although I'd sure love to have one!

The Bolt is TINY! Family car? For what? A family of dwarves?

> Why, in your opinion, is GM’s Chevy Bolt still being outsold by the Tesla Model S?

Because the Bolt’s a boring, though electric, compact car being sold at the price significantly above a similarly boring mass-market midsize plug-in hybrid (the Prius Prime) with sufficient all-electric range for reasonable commuting, and also somewhat above that of a competing boring compact all-electric (the Nissan Leaf) while Model S is a luxury mid-size electric vehicle with far less direct competition.

The Bolt is selling into a segment where utility/price is more important, and it's got strong competitors on that dimension. That's not a sign that GM can't make good EVs, but that GM is attacking the harder segment of the market; whether that's a good or bad business decision is debatable, but if EVs are ever more than a luxury niche item, the space the Bolt is competing in is going to matter a lot more than the space the Model S is competing in.

I'd say it's a failure of GM's marketing department and dealership salesmen that for some reason steer (no pun intended) people to ICEs.

GM should be capitalizing on Tesla's failure to bring the Model 3 out. They could absolutely sell the message of "Why wait 18 months for an affordable electric car when you can drive one TODAY?"

They could devour Model 3 reservations, but for some reason are choosing not to.

The people who reserved Teslas would probably wretch driving a GM. That company doesn’t belong in their psyche

GM is very VERY focused on the bottom line. The Chevy Bolt doesn't have a big margin. It's likely that they'd rather sell Escalades and pickup trucks. Because they have a fat margin.

Unlike Tesla, GM doesn't own its dealerships. Each dealership tries to optimize their selection for their own profit, each salesperson to optimize their sales for their own income. There's a complicated web of incentives tweaking which models are best for which entity at which time, but as a general rule if they are relatively inexpensive to manufacture and/or there are lots of them in inventory that's what they want to sell you. Trucks and those SUVs built on truck frames are always at the top of the list (Ford's F-150 is rumored to be the most profitable vehicle ever built, I think the Escalade is among GM's most profitable vehicle). If someone can create a cheap to build electric truck it might well grab the interest of dealers and salespeople, but they're never going to be excited to sell you a hard to build, low-margin family sedan regardless of powertrain.

Bolt and Model S occupy two very different areas of the car market.

The base trim Model 3 and the Bolt are competitors.

IMHO I don't believe GM is serious about electric cars yet. They may be, but they haven't demonstrated it sufficiently for me to depend on it. Until they show large commitments and demonstrate that they are betting the company's future on being able to do electric cars well and to continue doing so, I'm more interested in an electric car from a company that I know does have that commitment.

Where are the billions of dollars in contracts for batteries? Until I see that or a gigafactory of their own the Bolt will be a compliance car in my eyes. Albeit perhaps the best compliance car on the market at the moment.

The Bolt might be perfectly competent but it is not "sexy".

Can you see GM making competent electric cars? Yes they can do that all day long. Can they make it sexy?

That begs the question if GM can make any sexy cars. I would say that the Corvette, Camaro ZL-1 and Cadillac CTS-V might be fair examples of what GM is capable of.

So the question is can GM make a sexy mass produced electric car? They haven't tried yet.

It doesn't have to be sexy. It has to attract people that would buy a Prius or Leaf (and neither of those are the least bit sexy). It has to get good consumer reports ratings (the Volt does)..

I was actually surprised by the Volt, since a lot of my friends and coworkers bought them. Those people generally drove Mazdas, Hondas, and Toyotas.

If Chevy kept working on their eco-friendly image and continued to produce decent enough quality cars that get good consumer reports ratings, they'll probably do fine.

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