Quote:
Originally Posted by scoobysaurus
Another anology is the quartz crisis and its impact in legacy swiss watch manufacturers. Eventually quartz watches flooded the market with cheaper, more accurate and easier to maintain timepieces. Today the only swiss watchmakers that survive are the ones that stuck to their guns sell their watches at a premium as luxury status symbols for the most part. Once cheap electric cars flood the mainstream market and with luxury features being ubiquitous these days, it'll be interesting to see how the legacy upscale car manufacturers handle the electric crisis - do they go with the flow and reinvent themselves like Omega, stick to their guns and become powerhouses like Rolex, introduce something completely new to reinvigorate the product/market like Audemars Piguet, or go the way of the dodo like hundreds of other swiss manufactures did.
|
Honestly, makers like BMW need to pull back and re-focus themselves where they still have advantages while continuing to adapt to the future. They need a solid BEV strategy, but they also need ICE in some form (like PHEV) as well.
BUT they need to refocus luxury service as a core component of what they offer as well which will require some retooling of their dealer network. Tesla has a lot of mindshare that is really helping them to move cars currently, but they have serious quality and service issues that leave an opening for luxury car makers to still make an inroad. If Tesla closes those holes then luxury makers will be in a real tight place (and they will try as they look to expand the share of the pie they consume).