Go green. Go petrol?
Go green. Go petrol?
Ever since I have heard about the alternative fuel, electric
run cars have always been seen as the Eco-friendly option companred to diesel
and petrol. However recent research has shown that the Tesla model S P100D, the
top of the range electric car, produces 7452 kg more CO2 emissions than a
Mitsubishi Mirage and 4014 kg more than a BNW 7 Series 750i xDrive. The Mirage
and the BMW both run off alternative fuels and this will have major impact to
Tesla’s brand image, as the green image that comes alone side with electric
cars is no longer there. The government viewpoint on electric cars is that they
are all equally green and this leads to them assuming that they are all
Eco-friendly and this is clearly not the case. This is due to the amount of
emission used to create the battery, not the running of the car, as it uses
10kg of cobalt per car battery. In the blog I’m going to explore the impact of
the research on Tesla’s marketing and brand image
Tesla’s brand image
Tesla’s was founded in July 2003 and promote their cars to
be “Quickest Acceleration. Longest Range. The Safest Cars Ever.”. What I like about Tesla is that their car is
so advanced compared to other competition like BMW and Audi, with a range of
unique selling points. This in my opinion is why they have been such a success,
as the amount of research they have invested has put them in a gap in the
market for them to get great profits. With the research that’s shows that the
Tesla Model S P100D produces 12,204 kg of CO2, this will remove one of Tesla’s
unique selling points of being Eco-friendly. I feel like Tesla have design and
marketed the cars as to be benefiting to the environment and this research
could cause a reduction in customer interest. In evaluation of the research the
company will lose customers that are only interested in Eco-friendly cars; lose
a unique selling point to competition; will no longer have the Eco-friendly
image to the brand and are put under pressure by the government as they become
aware of the CO2 emissions. However, I personal feel that Tesla has a lot more
selling points that the loss of this one will not impact them majorly, as they
are one of the first car companies to develop the self-driving cars and the
number of accessories that Tesla include in their cars is crazy. In the finical
time article Electric cars’ green image blackens beneath the bonnet, they said
that electric vehicles companies are being threatened with finical penalties if
they don’t reduce tailpipe emissions by 30 percent between 2020 and 2030. This
will cause Tesla to invest heavily in research into greener option of engines
and this will reduce the amount of capital going around the business. Tesla’s
cars have a very high product cost as they invest a lot of money into research
that makes the cars so advanced compared to other competitors. This could
suppress the development of the new model of Tesla as they will not have the
capital, meaning customers waiting for a later model of Tesla might lose
interest and go to competitors for different options. This will also give time
for companies like BMW and Audi to catch up on the advancement on technology,
making the brand lose unique selling points. This research is going to cause
Tesla to make some ideas on how to solve this problem, so I’m going to use an
ideation technique called lotus blossom to create some ideas.
Use of Lithium and cobalt batteries
The problems with electric car batteries are that they need a lot of Lithium and cobalt in then, these materials have very high CO2 foot prints to be found. This is how they are losing to alternative fossil fuel sources, even when the running of electric car is much better. This might cause companies like Tesla to research into more Eco-friendly materials. This will have a few negative implications on the company, as they will have to maybe find a new supplier. A new supplier might mean higher costs on materials, this will have a direct impact of the selling price of the cars, could cause loss of price advantage on competition. The new supplier might have different trading conditions to the companies last one and if the companies relied on trade credit and the new supplier doesn’t offer that then this will cause major cash flow problems in the business. I feel like changing material is a very risky approach to solving this problem because a lot of money will have to be invested into finding a new material that fits a new design. In the worst outcome, the research could be paid for and no other alternative material could be found, meaning there have wasted all that capital in a pointless investment. One-way Tesla have approached this problem is by changing there Gigafactory in Nevada, plans to rely solely on wind and solar electricity for all manufacturing. This will mean that the amount of CO2 emissions created during manufacturing will be reduce because they are not relying on fossil fuels for energy, as they are disconnected from the grid. I think that this is a very good approach to this problem as it means that they will not have to spend time in research to new material and they can maintain their suppliers. This also means that there will be no costs on replacing the machinery because the designs will stay the same. However, the Gigafactortary will require a lot of energy to power, which means they will need a lot of wind and solar panel stations, so cost will be high. This will be ever important as big competition BMW released the i3 electric car and is only made from carbon fibre using hydroelectric power. BMW claims the production of the model uses 70 per cent less water and 50 per cent less energy than a conventional BMW. I think this market advances very quickly and because of this it has become very competitive. This market has forced the companies to invest a lot in research, as if they don’t they will fall behind, the competition will just take all their customers.
Overall from this blog I have learnt that the government and public can cause a huge amount of pressure on companies to change their product to suit them and if not handle well the company’s image can become majorly at risk. I have also learnt that the lotus blossom technique is a good way of exploring different layers to ideas and generates a range of different ideas. If I was leading a car company that create electric powered car then my action plan made definitely include multiply different ideation technique to find all the different possibilities. The main focus of my action plan would be in the manufacturing stage, as I feel this is when the most CO2 can be cut down. I would invest in research that could increase the efficiency on the machinery so less energy is needed to create each product, as production time will be a lot shorter. At the moment, I am driving an old Volkswagen golf and it seems to use so much petrol when I’m driving it and when and if I can afford to investment in a more expensive car, I would be really interested in getting a Tesla. This is mainly due to all the incentive that come along with the technology implemented into the vehicle and this applies to me as a very suitable and efficient car to run. There are also a lot of incentive in using an electric car with free parking next to chargers and the low cost to run the cars, compared to petrol. The real question is will electric car very take over the car market and become more common than petrol?
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