Electric Vehicles: A Case Study

Two parameters define Tesla’s industry competitive environment: what Tesla is today and what Tesla hopes to become in the near future. Today Tesla delivers an EV in the high-end luxury market ($70k+), but plans to deliver an affordable ($35K) small sized sedan in the next few years (Kaufman, 2015). The differences between Tesla’s current and future plans affect the threats and opportunities for potential entrants, industry competitors, and buyers in the near term and long term.

Tesla Motors is a global enterprise specializing in the design, production, and marketing of electric powered vehicles founded in 2003 by the young businessman, Elon Musk. Elon is well known for co-founding paypal, and now he amazes the world again with his incredible vision of Tesla Motors, and being the main product architect. Tesla Motors appeals to the environmentally friendly market, by currently being the only company to sell a zero-emission sports car. Tesla’s fundamental motive and selling point is producing only electric vehicles, as opposed to competing companies, producing a combination hybrid, or diesel car.

The Nissan leaf has been positioned differently for different market segments. According to Solomon, though the job of the marketer is to create value, build customer relationships and satisfy their needs, it is difficult, as in todays’ complex society people have different needs and therefore it is important to segment markets and target them individually, therefore markets are segmented into different segments on the basis of demographics; age and gender, family structure, income, race, ethnicity and social class (Solomon, 2013). Using these different criteria, marketers segment their markets, according to particular characteristics, which they share, and then target them accordingly. Targeting is evaluating

Tesla`s current objectives include creating a high demand for electric vehicles which ultimately will raise sales. This will be achieved as more awareness on the harm gasoline emissions cause on the environment is shown, and knowledge on electrical powered cars is gained. Tesla also plans to create customer loyalty with current customers and create customer referrals. Tesla will achieve this by continuing to have regular customer events, such as show rooms which display their new technology.

Opportunity: The electric automotive industry and Tesla should decrease both the costs of its batteries and in renewable energy to attract more purchasing customers.

Tesla electric cars first appeared as small, sporty two-seaters. On March 26, 2009, the Tesla Model S was released and marketed as the top-performing all-electric luxury SUV in its class. Considering the Model S’s impressive performance capacities, they make a sound argument. David Ener, writer for Canada’s “The Globe and Mail” newspaper describes his experience of driving the Model S

Through all of this information, Tesla and traditional gas powered car owners have learned more about the Tesla and how it is not as environmentally friendly as society may portray it to be. Hopefully the readers of this paper learn that you must be educated before they buy a certain product.

Electric cars are becoming very popular in today’s world and are becoming more main stream. One reason for this is the need for automobiles that have a lower or a zero carbon footprint. For the majority of the history of the automobile, the propulsion system was a gas or a diesel engine that would run off of fossil fuels. The burning of fossil fuels is very hazardous to our world and also creates much toxic pollution. However, electric cars run off of electricity, which is a very clean and pollution free resource, depending on how the electricity was produced of course. In this paper we are going to examine the history of electric cars, look into modern electric car technology, and peer into the future of electric car technology to see if EVs might be the answer to dramatically reducing our global pollution.

Tesla’s vision statement is “to create the most compelling car company of the 21st century by driving the world’s transition to electric vehicles” (Shield, 2014). According with the common themes of vision chapter 13, these statements must be broad, shared appeal, help deal with changes, reflect high ideals and define the organization’s destination and the basic rules to get there (Daft, 2016). On this paper, we are going to analyze the vision statement of this great company with the purpose of concluding if this is the vision, other companies should start applying in their industries.

As of 2013, Tesla owned 43% of the market share of electric vehicles in Canada (EVWORLD, 2013) and the market is expected to continue to grow, as sustainable energy becomes more of a way of life than a movement.  According to the Government of Canada, “the market for electric vehicles in Canada is growing as Canadians look for cleaner, more efficient vehicles. Research confirms that consumers in North America are willing to pay more for an electric vehicle if the environmental benefits are significant” (Government of Canada, 2010).  With this expedited increase in purchases of electric vehicles, the Tesla Model S is positioned well to obtain its goal of increasing its existing market share.

Tesla has become the first automaker to implement a direct sales business model, they don’t rely on middlemen to get their product to the masses, instead they go directly from the factory to the future owners via online sales. The people who are already costumers are satisfied and this makes their user base grow via word of mouth.

Tesla has successfully combined demographics and psychographics to market their products. Tesla Electric Vehicle (EV) has addressed current consumers needs and solve our pollution problems. Some of the psychographic information that can relate to the current consumers can be the following:

Between 2003 and 2013 Tesla was arguably one of the most controversial companies. An innovative company with a breakdown idea, had no financial success in its first decade. With the addition of Elon Musk in 2008, Tesla had a fresh new face at the stern of its company and was poised to make big strides into the future. Those strides finally broke through in 2013 with its first truly positive financial year. However, this year was not without trouble as Tesla found itself in the news for the wrong reasons. On several occasions their Model S design had issues with car fires. Though this did not cause a complete catastrophe, it cased questions to the true safety of their vehicles. Tesla would fight back by arguing the safety of their vehicles saved the drivers lives in addition to unforeseen circumstances that caused the fires. Because of these incidents, investors did get spooked and expectation for the remainder of 2013 and projected 2014 were lowered, yet once again Tesla powered through and had their best year of existence. With these above factors, Tesla is at a true crossroads: do they continue the uphill climb that 2013 presented, or do they falter and fall pretty to its competitors.

In order for Tesla Motors to keep growing now and into the future, it is going to be important to expand their target market to reach more consumers. Expanding the target market to include generation Y (mid-20s to early 40s, middle class working adult), Tesla would be able to utilize their facility, while increasing production. This target market will be pinpointing the young professionals that are looking for an entry level luxury car. We are going to segment the market for our new targets in three categories: eco-friendly consumers, tech savvy and entry level luxury cars.

Tesla use swinging by the fences strategy, which implement high risk business, however generate high return. First, we target the high end customer by producing high class product. We produce the product at the same level as Maserati, Porsche, etc. We need to make an high brand image for the brand, especially the Tesla brand is still new to the automobile industry. Telsa has this different aspect from other car nowadays, Tesla operated by battery or we could say Tesla produce electric car. After we got quite some revenue to expand our market, we will target new segmentation of customer, which lower than the above explanation. We produce a product with price range from US$ 50,000 – US$ 75,000, which has lower class than Maserati and Porshe. We use this marketing