Marketing isn't the only dept. with pull, but profit$ speak loud as that's what pays the bills. The following is my experience which is not directly automotive industry related, but was part of a multi-million dollar International company like Nissan.
When some cynic sneaks out into my posts on how business decisions were/are made, it comes from over 25 years working at hp as a Customer Engineer (CE, like an on-call computer Doctor, where you had to keep everything in your head: way before wireless, wifi, dvds, cds, the Internet, etc.). My group which did the 24/7 on-call repair/install/relocate customer work reported to the marketing dept. (it wasn't a whole lot of laughs being jerk around by them). Marketing is a very different beast (they really think differently - not always the way the real world does). What may seem a common sense approach/solution to an issue, is not-embraced/rejected for odd reasons by marketing, etc. Along the same lines of marketing playing with numbers to sell the same ol' product with a 2014 Leaf EV label on it ... At the time with hp was dropping everything and changing over to risc (a whole new design), marketing was still wanting to sell same as usual, but there were no new products in the pipeline to come out. Many marketing types were in a panic, as their marketing methods/metrics were all thrown in a tizzy if it wasn't 'business as usual' (IMO a rather inflexible marketing model). New revisions of the 3000 mpe (their own OS that ran on that hardware) were constantly coming out, so marketing slapped a new model number on the same ol' hardware and sold it as a new product (series 48) when really the only thing that had changed was it was bundled with the latest revision of mpe OS (not that big a deal). So, the former 3000 series 44 http://www.hpmuseum.net/display_item.php?hw=105 now was being sold as a model 48, -and- for $1000+ more money (ouch). When I installed my first model 48 after having installed many model 44's, I shook my head, thinking 'How could they get away with type of insanity?'. But they did, and everyone was happy again as all the marketing metrics were working again. Perhaps one of the reasons companies could get away with slight of hand practices like this, was there was no Internet discussion groups/lists like today, where everything can be brought out into the open for all to see and discuss. So, we could all be happy that we have that ability today (evdl.org : its a good thing) {brucedp.150m.com} - On Tue, Jan 14, 2014, at 09:22 AM, EVDL Administrator wrote: > On 14 Jan 2014 at 8:41, Ben Apollonio wrote: > > Wow, that's a dumb requirement by the EPA! > > As I read it, the EPA didn't mandate it. Nissan did it on their > own, solely so they could list higher EPA range numbers. The actual > range is unchanged, so it's strictly their advertising tweak. That > is, the engineers removed a useful feature to make the marketing > department happy. > > Shows you who's in charge in THAT company, eh? Not that it's any > different from any other. > > David Roden - Akron, Ohio, USA EVDL Administrator - -[original] > ... Rated range rises to 84 miles Most importantly to new buyers, the > range of the 2014 Leaf is now listed as 84 miles, up from last year's > 76 miles > > That number seems like a significant improvement, but in fact the only > change made to the car is the elimination of a software option that > let owners set battery charging to stop at 80 percent. > > In other words, the 2014 car has exactly the same battery, drivetrain, > and real-world range as the 2013--only its EPA range rating has > changed. > > Changing the rating math Nissan made the change because last year, > under EPA rules, the ability to charge only to 80 percent (which may > help lengthen battery life) required the company to blend of the > ranges achieved under 80-percent and 100-percent charging ... - -- http://www.fastmail.fm - IMAP accessible web-mail _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org For EV drag racing discussion, please use NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
