Extract from a phone call between friends: she is a Roman entrepreneur looking for a new car; he is an engine expert on duty (who is writing this article to you).
“You know Alessandro, among the eligible models I was also considering the Cupra… the Formentor, but with the history of the Volkswagen crisis I discarded it because I would like to avoid problems”.
I remain silent for a few moments and then, dumbfounded, I ask her if she seriously has this fear. She:
“Look, I talked about it just yesterday at dinner with a group of friends. And everyone agreed that there is a risk of having problems with spare parts…”
This telephone experience made me reflect on how difficult it is not only to predict but also to simply imagine the impact that communications can have breaking news on people’s choices. This is even more true for expensive and complicated goods to buy such as a modern car.
Just the car went into a tunnel of media storms one larger than the other. From the news of ban to the internal combustion engine “imposed by Brussels” in 2021, to the increase in prices due to the war, passing through the many concerns about the electric car (battery at risk of fire, children exploited in lithium mines, geopolitical imbalances and so on and so forth more).
In the last period there has been talk of an “electric car flop” combined with the crisis of European manufacturers – Volkswagen in the lead – caused according to many observers by the above-mentioned ecological transition policies and by Chinese competition.
You can go into the merits of each issue and debate it for days, but there is only one certainty: in a context like this the desire to spend money to buy a car would also pass to the son of a car salesman.
The confusion in people’s minds is such that to reverse the trend, a series of new models, promotions, new incentives or the postponement of European deadlines on CO2 emission limits will not be enough.
Today, to restart the automobile industry, we must regain the people’s trustwhich is a vital variable in a market economy. We need to rediscover trust in the product, in the technology that characterizes it, in the same interlocutors who have to sell it and obviously we need to clarify the “rules of the game” that can directly or indirectly encourage purchase.
It will be a great challenge and it is a communication challenge. Which concerns everyone: industry, supply chain, politics and themselves media like us who talk about cars for a living.
The problem will be agree on the objectives and choose whether to do clarity once and for all by helping people to understand a very complicated, messy but inevitable revolution, or focus on short-term needs to save accounts, image, share price or votes (depending on your point of view) while ignoring the future. Which arrives sooner than expected, always and in any case.
Cupra
The Cupra Formentor subject of the “personal phone call”
PS going back to my friend, obviously I explained to her that if she likes a Cupra Formentor she doesn’t run any risk and that many things could happen to the Volkswagen Group in the coming months, but it will continue to exist. So there will be all the spare parts you want.
Source: it.motor1.com
