La BMW i Vision Dee is the star of the Consumer Electronics Show 2023 in Las Vegas, Nevada, the world’s premier consumer electronics show. The exterior color of the vehicle can be changed at the press of a button to suit the driver’s wishes; thirty-two shades are available. Stellantis’ latest thing is called the RAM Revolution BEV, a massive, tech-packed pickup.. As for Mercedes, the German brand’s electrification strategy can be summed up in one slogan: “Tech to Desire”, an entire program…
The ecological transition and the electrification of the ranges promised another way of approaching the car, which would be more economical, lighter, more shared, less statutory. The mutation is turning into a technological orgy, a festival of always more, with ever bigger, more powerful and more expensive vehicles, beyond the reach of the vast majority of the population.
The powertrain no longer runs on oil, but the industry software remains hopelessly unchanged. This had been developed in the 1920s by Alfred Sloan, who made General Motors the world’s leading manufacturer thanks to a revolutionary approach to the market at the time. Faced with the standardization popularized by Henry Ford, “Sloanism” invents a commercial policy that is no longer based on the essential need of the buyer. We must constantly offer novelty, standing, gadgets, which encourages the customer to change vehicles more often. “The automobile trade has always been about making a thirsty donkey drink”summarizes Bernard Jullien, lecturer at the University of Bordeaux, specialist in the automotive industry.
The choice of profitability
Today, if the sector is electrifying at high speed, it is with the recipes of the past, thus missing the opportunity to revolutionize the way we move and our relationship to the automobile. The marketing of abundance trumps that of sobriety. A missed act that will have economic and ecological consequences.
From an economic point of view, by over-sophisticating the offer, manufacturers take the risk of drying up demand. The movement has already started. In France, the market has returned to its 1975 level. In Germany and the United Kingdom, sales are at their lowest since the early 1990s. The effects of the Covid-19 crisis and shortages of components n not explain everything.
By their own admission, the leaders of the sector have chosen profitability over sales volumes. Brands are moving upmarket, trying to seduce customers with more and more options.
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