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Comment by lisper | Hacker News Reader

> every year the "Tesla killers" fail to kill, or even wound

That's true, but I think it's because of bad marketing rather than bad technology. The Chevy Bolt has the specs to beat the Model 3, but it is being positioned as a low-end car, a competitor to the Honda Civic rather than the Model 3. Power seats, for example, are not even offered as an option. That is not a car a rich person is going to buy to impress their friends. But GM could easily turn it into such a car. They obviously know how to make power seats. All the heavy lifting has been done. I have no idea why they aren't doing it, but GM has a long history of shooting itself in the foot when it comes to electric vehicles.

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Yes I think you're right, but that may be an even harder gap to close than tech.

Good Marketing: Crazy genius CEO who is always in the news, builds rockets in his spare time, launches his car into space, smokes weed with Joe Rogan, and constantly thumbs his nose at the authorities. Customers like this company so much that the CEO can ask for volunteers and actually get a response. $0 advertising budget. All marketing by word of mouth. Direct to consumer sales with transparent pricing.

Bad Marketing: Standard car company. Nobody even knows the CEO's name, and he only speaks publicly in boring prepared statements run through a huge PR team. Massive advertising budget producing totally boring car ads that are indistinguishable from other companies. Sold through dealerships and sketchy salesmen who negotiate a different price for each customer.

I can see the big companies beating Tesla on tech a lot more than I can see them becoming like Tesla as a brand.

According to their SEC filings, Tesla spends between $60 and $100 million annually on marketing, and they've definitely placed billboards in major cities since I have seen several of them in the LA area.

Was true for a while. I guess that's no longer the case.

Which is true? They did and stopped, or started now?

> $0 advertising budget.

uh, what's elons PR budget?

Toyota. Don't know the CEOs name. Instead I "know" that they produce vehicles with extremely high quality that will last me a good long time. I "know" that my F-150 will get the job done. My BMW is a status symbol.

AFAIK, GM is selling the Bolt at a loss. They don't have the ability to source batteries in quantities or at a cost low enough to compete with Tesla. This is also a problem for much of the EV competition. Tesla made the right bet by vertically integrating battery production and aiming for economies of scale. This is a huge competitive advantage that many people fail to understand. Batteries are most of the cost of an EV, and you need a lot of them. It's the reason why you don't see "Tesla killers" overtaking the market.

> The Chevy Bolt has the specs to beat the Model 3

Really? What specifications? The Model 3 is better in pretty much every way in every comparison I've ever seen, including specs directly from the manufacturer websites.

Let me rephrase that. The Bolt has the specs to be what the Model 3 promised to be but isn't: a practical all-electric car with reasonable range at a <$40k MSRP.

>>The Bolt has the specs to be what the Model 3 promised to be but isn't

Could be that this is the same large company problem that is often seen elsewhere. In most established firms it impossible to bring up a new line of products that cannibalize the existing products. In order for any large car manufacturer to make it big on EV, they have to allow their EV offering to beat their existing products, that's impossible in most companies.

Besides merely the car isn't what Tesla is about. The fact that you can bypass dealerships, online ordering, supercharger network etc kind of add to a new paradigm of doing things. For existing manufacturers, they will have to kill a lot of their existing business to get that to work.

I've done the same thing with my shed business with online ordering. Cut the dealers out and the product is far better priced.

The model 3 starts at $44K. They are $4000 away from doing that. I would bet that it drops below $40K by the end of the year.

And there it is:. The $35k model 3:

https://www.tesla.com/blog/35000-tesla-model-3-available-now

Wow, that is some remarkable timing.

> But GM could easily turn it into such a car.

Almost any car company could, which is interesting. The entire powertrain and infotainment system are manufactured by LG Chem and sold as an integrated package.

GM made it into a minimum viable product, and since they're GM, it's pretty meh. It would be interesting to see what Hyundai or Kia would do with the same tech.

The model 3 is supposed to be a competitor to the Honda Civic.

GM is stopping Bolt production this year.

https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1120090_gm-to-kill-chev...

The Bolt isn’t the Volt.

But it does illustrate wooden-headed marketing. Two such similar names and no implicit means of distinguishing one from the other, except perhaps "the one that sounds like it should be the pure EV isn't". No wonder people are confused and think GM is discontinuing the EV.

I can't imagine Apple releasing the yPhone alongside the iPhone.

Haha. Great line. Forevermore I shall refer to it as the yPhone. Cheers!

indeed, it even captures my personal thoughts when i see them in the wild: the WHY phone

> "why would you spent so much money for a device you'll throw away in less then 24 month anyway?"

Off-topic but someone else will likely get that device, the iPhone 5s from October 2013 has the latest iOS.

That's the Volt, not the Bolt. Completely different car. The Volt is a plug-in hybrid. The Bolt is all-electric.

Ah, I didn't see the difference between _v_olt and _b_olt.

I'd like to blame terrible marketing, but I should've paid closer attention.

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