Meeting with that team of 6 business advisers was the single best thing I could do for my business. They made me realize that building a vehicle for what I THOUGHT was my target customer was the best way to fail as a business. They made me realize that I thought was important, and what this list thinks is important, makes the chance of success very small.
One of the advisers, that is also a "car guy" said "Describe to me your target customer". I proceeded to describe someone like me, him and many on this list. He simply said "Wrong. Your target customer should be someone like my wife. She wants an attractive car that she can take to social events and be able to say "I have en electric sports car and you don't'". My target customer can easily go out and buy an exotic in the $375,000+ price range and pay cash for it. But so can all of their neighbors and people in their social circle. A Tesla Model S has little appeal to them because, in their circles, EVERYONE has one. I BIG part of their value system is to have something no one else has and that they likely can't get. One of thewir highest priorities, if not THE highest priority, is to NEVER pull up to a traffic light or social event and see another car like theirs. Think of this car like an evening gown... they would be HORRIFIED is another woman showed up in the same dress! I am not selling a car, I am selling a status symbol. So all this about efficiency, weight and aerodynamics don't mean squat to them. If I need range, slap in more batteries until I get the target range. That weight can be reduced as battery technology advances. Like I said, i NEVER would have put value on these things before I met with that team of advisers. The final pieces of advice "Take your initial concept and price as an ICE car, add the cost of conversion, DOUBLE IT to compensate for the hassle and risk, add that you your previous price target (shown in my business plan I had already provided), and you will sell cars as fast as you can make them." The other advice was to not even target a US customer. "Find a wealthy client in a foreign country and build a car for them". -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://lists.evdl.org/private.cgi/ev-evdl.org/attachments/20160114/acb07b44/attachment.htm> _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org Read EVAngel's EV News at http://evdl.org/evln/ Please discuss EV drag racing at NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
