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Case 1: Segmenting and Targeting the Electric Car Market

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The North American electric car market is at the ferment stage of development. Google “electric car” and you will get many start-ups with their design and plans to “make” the market. The big auto companies have their planned models and so do numerous venture capital start-ups. They all seem to be about 2-3 years away from launching their products. The problem is battery range and power. With today’s technology, a small, low cost mass produced eCar would have a range of about 80 miles on a charge and a top speed of 60 miles an hour. This is considered not good enough for the market that is used to gasoline cars with top speeds of 100+ and with a range of 300+ miles. The eCar has to get a lot better before it is viable. That is the …show more content…

Why not feature a car that goes 80 miles on a charge at a top speed of 60 mph? Design the batteries and charging unit as modules that can be replaced by more powerful modules down the road. Everyone else will be competing on speed and range. Be different. Understand better the commuting experience, rather than fret about extending speed and range. Provide the best positioned coffee mug and cosmetics holders to accommodate what people do when they are commuting. Provide a superb cell-phone-driven speaker phone system that enables you to listen to messages, and make calls from steering wheel controls. Provide the best sound system experience in a small car, by far. Provide the safest capsule seating design. Smallness and lightness means less safe and this must be countered by featuring safety. Provide the very simplest plug and charge system. No installed meters – meter is included in car and used to claim tax discounts that will be inevitable to promote pure eCar use. Provide a warning alarm if the cord is still attached when the car is started. You partner with a major Indian small car manufacturer such as Tata or Bajaj to take its people’s car frame and mechanics and convert it to electrical power ($5,000 at retail), make it super safe and add commuting delights ($1,500 at retail), give it super

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