Thoughts on the EV Business

Chas,

I think that a bricks and mortar operation like you suggest is a great idea - in fact I think it's essential before one can ever hope for mainstream adoption. However the cost associated with setting up such an operation is beyond my budget. Furthermore one has to then chose the best place to open such an operation and find the appropriate staff. No more small undertaking!

The intricacies of setting up a remote partnership can be fraught with surprising turns of event due to miscommunication and missteps by both parties (I am one of those parties who has misstepped and miscommunicated).

So, instead of the model you suggest I am hoping that in the next couple of years the electric scooter and motorcycle product can gain enough quality whereby existing scooter shops would willingly sell and service these bikes alongside their gas models. I have decided not to approach my local scooter shop at this point in time because their history with "cheap Chinese scooters" means that it would be an uphill battle to even get a foot in the door and they would likely step away from the deal if things didn't go well. Instead I hope to approach them after I've got one or two successful years.

I'm hopeful that the XM-3000 will address some of the issues present with the XM-2000. If it indeed does fulfill on these promises then this bodes well because it means that even if the XM-3000 isn't "perfect" (which it won't be) - it does at least mean that the manufacturers and importers are learning and things are getting better.

Well, what you're describing sounds to me like the difference between a distributor and a dealer.

A distributor aggregates orders from a big pool of dealers, sets the design etc for vehicles those dealers sell, etc. But distributors aren't supposed to sell directly. Instead they're supposed to sell to dealers who are the ones handling customers.

[/b]Chas_stevenson wrote

If the EV Business owners would get together with each other and imported large numbers of vehicles at a reduced cost to them, it could help increase their profits.

The trick is to get every business owner to come to terms, and you will have those who won't want to go with that idea
"can't we just all get along?"

I have been thinking about some of the resent activity which has happened on VisforVoltage. We lost one member recently, who had a fair amount of EV knowledge, because he/she could not play well with others. The sad part of the whole situation is, I don't think this ex-member is a bad person but his/her outlook on fairness in business is very poor. IMO he/she wants to be the big fish in the pond and anyone he/she sees as a threat must be brought down to boost his/her own business (ego). If he/she would play nice with everyone I think he/she would fair much better. He/She seems to have high integrity when it comes to dealing with his/her customers, too bad it does not seem to extend to other business owners.

Revising my comment; Sometimes people do not realize their own behavior patterns
It is sometimes unfortunate in a business because, Customers do have the RIGHT to leave and leave negative feedback based on an owner or employee's previous behavior towards customers.
Obviously, this creates a bad reputation just because of your own behavior.
The negative feedback's or comebacks just do not go away, it takes time to build relationships with customers and gain trust.

Another aspect to consider is who the customer is in your location. Here in Madison, WI, 90% of scooters are owned by college students. The majority of them live in residences that do not have easy access to outside electricity; neither do the campus buildings.
So even if there were a reliable electric scooter, and I tried to start a business selling them, I don't think I could manage to compete with the gas scooter market and make a profit. Students wouldn't buy them (justifiably) since there is no infrastructure to support them.

However, I would imagine asking interested students to approach the University and ask them to provide available charging points would stand a reasonable chance of success. With the correct approach I would imagine a university in a town like Madison would see this as positive PR for little real world cost or headache.

I know there is a lot of competition out there, but it would also be helpful if a lot of the business owners do a lot of marketing and advertising of their products and their business alone. This is a process that should be done every month. I know this is also expensive, but in the long-run you may gain more customers. It's a good way to make your name more "known" to the public and could even have a few potential buyers in the future. Another way would also be to have free seminars on how EV's run and how to maintain them.

My advertising strategy was non-existent last year. This year I just plan on running ads in the local paper's classified section (an actual business ad - not just a private classified entry). I might also experiment with Google Ad Words - but I'm a complete noob at that so I don't know how effective it will be for me (I'm leery of lots of click-throughs but not many sales).

However, before I do any of that I'll approach the folks on my e-mail list and see if any of them want to buy.

I don't think I'm at a stage where I want a big advertising presence or to hold free seminars. Those ideas so make more sense for a bigger venture than mine. Maybe in a couple of years I'll "step up to the challenge" and try and grow this bigger. But for now I'm a one man operation.

I'm definitely a tortoise not a hare!

I might also experiment with Google Ad Words - but I'm a complete noob at that so I don't know how effective it will be for me (I'm leery of lots of click-throughs but not many sales).

I've run adwords advertising once or twice .. and there's definitely a trick to it. My ads didn't get very good results and I think there's a way of writing advertising that I don't grok. Google has algorithms out the wazoo that track how well your ad is doing and if it's getting little click action they'll downgrade your ad and if it does badly enough they'll drop the ad.

However there's a lot you can do to cause the search engines to bring in traffic that doesn't involve buying advertising. Writing articles that trigger given keywords will then draw traffic to your site. And it's a big game of trying to get attention.

Good luck...

I can understand about being a "one man operation". Our shop is a small independent repair shop, with lots of competition around. We have been struggling for quite awhile now and just managing to get back up. When you do things like advertising and marketing, it can help in the long-run by gaining new and hopefully long - term customers. I did a lot of advertising and marketing strategies for my families shop One of the things I did was the "door knockers" idea. Basically we had promotions where if you purchase an oil change you get free wiper blades. Something simple, because it costs you money. It may be free to the customers but it costs you money. The auto-industry is really slow right now. Seminars are just another way of getting your name more known to the industry so people can say hey "this shop did this and I am going back because of their customer service"