I was therefore very interested to read about the new gambit
from Tesla Motors last week. According to the statement issued by Elon Musk on his personal blog, the company is now offering an 8-year, unlimited-mileage warranty on
the battery pack and power train on all of its vehicles. That would be amazing
enough, but according to the note they will also be extending the new warranty
retroactively to cover all of the units in each of these designs that have
already been sold. Warranty agreements that offer as much as ten years are
common, as are offers of 100,000 miles or more, but as far as I can tell this
is the first such offer to include unlimited miles as part of the deal. But
when you consider the implications of the offer, it rapidly becomes apparent
that this is more than just a selling point for the product…
One of the biggest problems for any new technology is that
people are going to see it as unproven – even if, as in this case, the
technology in question is actually very old. It turns out that electric cars
have existed for over a century and actually predate most of the current
internal combustion technology that everyone thinks of as being proven and
reliable. It seems obvious that by offering unlimited mileage on its warranty,
the company is effectively saying that they have no concerns about the
durability of their products; they are effective both challenging people to try
driving one of their cars a spectacular number of miles over eight years of
ownership, and calling their entrenched competitors on the fact that none of their
supposedly “proven” and “mature” gasoline-powered cars has anything approaching
this level of coverage…
Then there’s the specific perception of electric-only and
even hybrid cars as needing new battery packs every few years, and that the
manufacturers are unable to handle disposing of the old batteries. If Tesla is
offering a complete warranty on their drive systems and battery packs for eight
years they clearly aren’t expecting to have to replace any in three or five
years – and they can’t be that worried about having to dispose of bad units
when that becomes necessary. You would also expect excessive use to shorten the
service life of both the power pack and the associated drive systems, but Tesla
is clearly not concerned with that, either. Some consumers may still view the
purchase of these cars as something of a gamble, but it is apparent that if
that’s the case, the company and its ownership (including at least one
entrepreneurial legend) are going to take that risk right along with you…
And if that wasn’t enough, there’s also the matter of
getting more vehicles onto the road. The only way for Tesla to become a
mainstream brand – not some new, exotic, possibly ephemeral technology toy – is
for the sight of its products to become commonplace; for the sight of a Tesla
roadster in the next parking space to become no more remarkable than the sight
of a Ford on the other side. If this can boost acceptance and purchase of the
vehicles – and the company is already operating at full manufacturing capacity
and building a new factory to increase that output – then they just might make
it out of the Introduction phase of the life cycle and into the Growth phase.
Once they can convince more than just the Early Adopters to purchase their
product they’re off to the races…
Stay tuned, folks. This is starting to get interesting…
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