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Buy up a few parking lots in a few major metros and let people unlock the cars with an app on their phones as short term rentals.

The vehicles will probably end up as a loss, but it's going to get a lot of press. Then start selling them. Make the parking lots into car dealerships. Put them in college towns where people are just starting to get real jobs and have money to spend, and are also very online.

This is clever, but I think you could get a similar result with fewer dedicated internal staff (better for a company with no US ops) by leasing or selling vehicles to e.g. ZipCar.

Zip car is essentially what I mean. Just adding the additional press bump by trying to draw a comparison to the scooter shares, or docked bicycles.

Do you mean sell the cars to students? It's same problem: they will probably prefer very used cars from known brands over slightly used cars from an unknown brand.

Sell cars to people a few years out of college who are now trying to signal their membership in the middle class.

This comment just rings so true to the behavior of a bunch of my peers over the past few years.

Has it ever been different?

One advantage of selling people their first car is that they might be slightly less likely to have strong opinions on brands. Need every advantage you can get.

And yes they are more easily to fall pray to money pit brands.

They're already selling their cars at a loss, according to the article. I'm sure there are plenty of people who would buy a Vietnamese electric car if it was 25-50% less than a Japanese/American/European one. Thats certainly how Korean cars managed to break into the US market.

Detroit never stopped churning out clunkers. My neighbors brand new, $50k Chevy truck’s electrical is completely shot after first year. This is in mild Northern California weather.

Chevrolet ranks 25th in reliability out of 30 mass market vehicle brands.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2019/11/14/consume...

It so bad, it's a running joke [1] I think low-end Fords (i.e. simple) are the only US car I'd consider and even then, their transmissions are suspect.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSBsq6HBBzw

Whole reason I bought a Ford Fiesta with a stick is because I heard that their transmissions are made out of glass.

Otherwise, decent car.

A FiST though :)))

Given the angle of the original Consumer Reports study that the USA Today article is about, it wouldn't appear as simple as your comment suggests.

And here my 4 year old $20k ford is still worth $12k, so maybe not all of Detroit is bad?

I think the broader point to note here is that it's relatively easy to build simple machines. It's hard to build reliable complex machines.

I would certainly trust a low end Ford Focus, more so than even a low end VW Golf / Skoda Scala.

As soon as you move into premium models both the American and European manufacturer start to show their weaknesses compared to the Lexus/Acura/Infiniti/etc brands from Japan.

Tesla is an American brand. I would argue Ford/Lincoln is the best Detroit motor company. GM makes meh cars. Chrysler is no longer American.

> So, what do you do the first 4 years? That's a lot of years to take a loss in order to gain market share.

Hyundai addressed this by offering a ten year warranty. They could do that right out of the gate rather than waiting until they have a bad reputation first.

Another possibility is to start off with a big leasing program. People aren't too concerned about repair costs or resale values for leased vehicles.

Decent idea but wrong description. Hyundai and Yugo has problems decades before “internet memes” were a thing.

USENET meme then?

That's a really narrow conception of "meme". If you think of it as the brand's reputation, and widespread jokes, anecdotes, etc. then it's spot on.

> it takes a long time to recover that reputation. Detroit brands are still recovering from the clunkers they made in the 70's and 80's.

I would say that they are still recovering from the clunkers they made in the 2000s.

Detroit never really got into the quality mindset that the Japanese car makers became famous for. And they didn't get into the driving dynamics mindset of their European counterparts, except maybe a couple of Cadillac models starting with the CTS-V.

You can always tell you're in a >5 year old Dodge by the cracked dashboard, over 30 years of same never solved issue :o

Never really recovered, did you see the recent article on the coverup over fiesta and focus transmissions at ford. Shit like this is why I don’t buy “American” (Mexican) cars

It's simple to make one that moves, but hard to make it superior to other brands.

"American consumers will want to see roughly 5 years of reliable quality"

You say that as if it's gospel, but it sounds like "boomer thinking" to me. The demand for electric cars over the next ten years will mostly come form people who have different ways of making purchasing decisions than in decades past. And they've never heard of a Yugo.

I don’t think researching a $40k purchase and valuing reliability is “boomer thinking”. It’s a side effect of people getting married, buying homes, and starting families.

Yeah, lol. It's called adult thinking. And it happens once you actually become one. One that is responsible for others, not just yourself and your whims. "Adulting" for an hour a week to pay your bills doesn't count.

The average age of a new car buyer in the US is 53 years old, so maybe you're on to something...

That might have been true once, but I suspect this small-sample history is now irrelevant due to shifting demographics. Only Boomers remember the Yugo. The rest of us are too busy trying to afford the privilege of commuting to really care where the car came from.

What a bizarre sentiment. If you can barely afford it you should care more. Get a reliable make and model that there are a lot of so the parts are cheap. Also, I’m not a Boomer and I remember Yugos.

The only thing I know about the Yugo is that it was awful.

You're confused. The topic was generational bias over country of origin, not reliability.

The actual topic is reliability. Country-of-origin is a consideration in reliability. You can't just exclude the context of the original post.

You're trying to argue that "Boomers", which I took in good faith that you were not using as an epithet, are the only ones who would consider country-of-origin. That's, simply put, wrong.

> Only Boomers

Why is this term suddenly popular, especially here?

I'm downvoting comments using it, since it seems to be disparaging at best, if not offensive. It's also used inaccurately. The Yugo wasn't even produced until 1980.

>> if not offensive.

It is offensive, 100%. It's grouping and stereotyping people based on age, meaning that for example my parents are subject to it, despite growing up in communist Poland and not getting any economic benefits normally attributed to "boomers". At 28, I'm probably 10x "wealthier" than they were at my age, but of course they are "boomers" by age so fuck them for ruining the economy, right?

> but of course they are "boomers" by age so fuck them for ruining the economy, right?

If you're vicariously triggered by the word "boomer", it's because you have this attitude attached to it. As with the other commenter, I can't help you with words you're trying to put in my mouth.

It seems to have gained popularity among younger people as an insult against anyone perceived as older. I'm 39 and have been called a boomer by a teen of about 14 or 15 yo. I guess it morphed into an insult for anyone older than 30 nowadays.

Its a mix of 4chan and reddit memes, plus deliberate attempts by bad actors to provoke intra-cultural conflict to shape consensus and rally people to respective voting blocks.

There are strains of truth there -- life ain't grand for the millennial crowd -- but it's more of a meme than anything, IMO.

Also rather incongruous on HN, since there is a much stronger mid-career / older crowd on HN, aka the Slashdot refugees.

I don't remember Slashdot being quite this salty, but it's been long time. All I said was "Boomer" and suddenly everyone's acting like they just saw the fnords.

Ironic given how baby boomers used the slogan "don't trust anyone over 30" in the 60s.

My sense of it is that most of these are Russian propagandists trying to sow dissent in America, and that's why the popularity of the phrase tends to peak for two months are so and then die off for six months before resurfacing.

I don't get it. Do Russian propagandists hibernate semiannually?

You're close. I'm actually a shill for Reynolds Wrap. They want you to think it's Russia so that the surplus tinfoil from the holidays will all sell off. Then they deactivate us until cookout season comes around.

> electric cars are relatively simple compared to combustion engine cars.

It's not really an advantage, though. Established makers have that same advantage, with the addition of having established dealer and service networks, established reputation, and so on.

He's about 10 years late to the EV party