Electricnick, The EV Revolution

GM Voltec

GM is still beating the “anxiety range” fear, uncertainty and doom, FUD message to the point of hurting its image again.

The gist is the more things change, the less they do.  And that seems to be particularly accurate in the case of GM.  GM has always relied on PR and marketing tactics to rekindle excitement with less results over the past decades.  After the bankruptcy, everyone hoped GM had learned its lesson.  After hearing its CEO beating the tired and over used “anxiety range” fear tactic, it makes us question if GM is ready for the EV revolution.

FUD! That is what GM CEO Fritz Henderson is still indulging when he recently said that “range anxiety” will be a hindrance to the adoption of electric cars, according to gm-volt.com.  The problem is, GM is the only one that keeps on abusing that motto over and over again.  Why?  If you had all of your assets depending on the eventual success of a plug-in hybrid, PHEV called the Volt, that GM insists on calling an extended range electric vehicle, EREV, would you not want to instill a certain of range fear in people to have them flock to your product?  It seems this is what GM is doing.  The same GM has been doing for decades.

GM CEO Fritz Henderson: “Everybody is trying to solve the problem of range because we have range anxiety… The consumer doesn’t want to be strained. We had the same problem with the EV1, not enough range.”  But GM overplays the range anxiety fear to the point of discrediting themselves.  We still do not hear too many people complaining about the lack of range the EV1 had.  If the cost of EVs is important to consumers, GM should not treat them as being stupid.  When Henderson says that battery costs must come down, we wholeheartedly agree.  As far as motor and control costs coming down we wonder where the company is shopping around, since those prices are reasonable these days.

It is sad to see that some things do not change easily at GM.  The company is still doing what it has done best for the past decades, manipulating consumer fears in order to sell their products.  We would like to see a GM that takes an intelligent stand by educating consumers, not spreading fear and treating them as brainless buying automatons.  GM needs to stop FUD once and for all and step into the modern electric drive world.