ÆCIII
Well-known member
GM's business model, cuts and redistributes a lot of money to third parties which contribute zero to the substance of their manufactured car. With decades of practice, they are masters at producing body styles and interior themes while hiding how little of the car's budget those things actually take. Advertising and short clips of mesmerizing footage have been one of their main mechanisms to entice buyers.
Long before Tesla even existed I was complaining how auto companies (including GM) would add drip-drop features and spread technology innovations over several model years, even though they were in possession of the tech years earlier. At the time I called this 'market manipulation', and I began to see how this was driven by dealership associations, wanting to regulate innovation because a satisfied customer would not buy another car for quite a few years, which is exactly what the dealerships didn't want.
So the drip-drip of tech and innovative improvements were meant to be a dangling carrot trolling customers along each year, to assure buyers would keep coming back to get 'the next newest or latest greatest thing'. This behavior to regulate 'release' of innovations really proved that they lacked faith in themselves to keep producing newer and newer innovations in a substantial way. They were only interested in 'milking' what innovations they had developed, while also promoting excessive service needs at the dealership level. Again, I was emphasizing these points well before year 2000, and long before Tesla even existed as a company. Legacy auto (and GM's) real approach and attitude toward car buyers, has been entrenched for decades.
This slow and stagnant focus on innovation is why (I believe) they had difficulty adjusting to the influx of brands like Toyota, Nissan and Honda from way back in the 80s. Legacy auto's early answers to those brands, were models like the Vega and Pinto. Many of us know how those turned out. It took years for legacy auto to even begin catching up to the refinements of the imported brands, because of one factor that still exists today - the fact that a smaller percentage of the overall legacy auto budget is even available for innovation, because they're too strapped with dealerships, unions, and advertising.
Legacy auto is still using their same failing approaches today - aligning themselves, advertising themselves, but with less focus on developing themselves. Everything they're doing maintains a thick slice of their budget for associations and hype, leaving less for the substance of any manufactured car. In my opinion dealerships and media advertising are heavy counterproductive burdens which will not be sustainable. However long they maintain these burdens, they will be a continuing detriment and counter force to innovation.
I think all of this stems from the having a 'marketing mentality' verses a 'substance mentality'.
Legacy auto underestimated Japanese imports and their tech back in the 1980s. Legacy auto is also underestimating the depth and substance of Tesla innovation today. Discounting the accomplishments of others is really just setting a lower bar for oneself.
- ÆCIII
Long before Tesla even existed I was complaining how auto companies (including GM) would add drip-drop features and spread technology innovations over several model years, even though they were in possession of the tech years earlier. At the time I called this 'market manipulation', and I began to see how this was driven by dealership associations, wanting to regulate innovation because a satisfied customer would not buy another car for quite a few years, which is exactly what the dealerships didn't want.
So the drip-drip of tech and innovative improvements were meant to be a dangling carrot trolling customers along each year, to assure buyers would keep coming back to get 'the next newest or latest greatest thing'. This behavior to regulate 'release' of innovations really proved that they lacked faith in themselves to keep producing newer and newer innovations in a substantial way. They were only interested in 'milking' what innovations they had developed, while also promoting excessive service needs at the dealership level. Again, I was emphasizing these points well before year 2000, and long before Tesla even existed as a company. Legacy auto (and GM's) real approach and attitude toward car buyers, has been entrenched for decades.
This slow and stagnant focus on innovation is why (I believe) they had difficulty adjusting to the influx of brands like Toyota, Nissan and Honda from way back in the 80s. Legacy auto's early answers to those brands, were models like the Vega and Pinto. Many of us know how those turned out. It took years for legacy auto to even begin catching up to the refinements of the imported brands, because of one factor that still exists today - the fact that a smaller percentage of the overall legacy auto budget is even available for innovation, because they're too strapped with dealerships, unions, and advertising.
Legacy auto is still using their same failing approaches today - aligning themselves, advertising themselves, but with less focus on developing themselves. Everything they're doing maintains a thick slice of their budget for associations and hype, leaving less for the substance of any manufactured car. In my opinion dealerships and media advertising are heavy counterproductive burdens which will not be sustainable. However long they maintain these burdens, they will be a continuing detriment and counter force to innovation.
I think all of this stems from the having a 'marketing mentality' verses a 'substance mentality'.
Legacy auto underestimated Japanese imports and their tech back in the 1980s. Legacy auto is also underestimating the depth and substance of Tesla innovation today. Discounting the accomplishments of others is really just setting a lower bar for oneself.
- ÆCIII
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