Bill Clinton Had Some Great Advice For The Founder Of An Electric Car Company en-us Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:00:00 -0500 Thu, 25 Dec 2014 07:29:07 -0500 Max Nisen patrick k Thu, 28 Feb 2013 10:11:12 -0500 What was left out was Bill's best advice at the end--put a little ice on that. Investor Thu, 28 Feb 2013 09:23:23 -0500 It's actually potentially good advice. Give the car away for free, make your money selling the recharging stations to every gas station around the country by charging an up front fee as well as a vig on every charge. And if you gave the car away from free, there'd be tremendous demand for recharging stations from both gas stations and the upper middle class and above (and if you sell enough of them, the price could potentially come down and open up availability to still other demographics). You'd have to get recharge times down tremendously from where current tech cars are at (no more than 15 to 20 minutes for a full charge), perhaps using a capacitor and extremely high voltage/wattage (who knows, not an electrical engineer) but it's a possibility. No clue if the numbers could be made to work, but if he's trying to disrupt an existing technology, this is one way to go about it. just.a.guy Thu, 28 Feb 2013 08:45:21 -0500 The concept of "disruptive" technologies lies in their cost advantage for their relative feature set. The idea is that incumbents over-deliver on product features (hence cost and price) over time, and new technologies often introduce radically cheaper ways to deliver the key benefits. The value proposition is "less for a lot less" -- this new product or service will do LESS than the common one, for FAR LESS time, risk, and/or hassle. That concept does not yet apply at all to electric cars because of the costs of the underlying technology at present. The value proposition of most electric cars today is that they will do "less for a lot more". The automobile was not disruptive to the horse initially. It started as a lower function, higher risk, higher hassle, much higher priced toy for the rich until the technology got good enough and cheap enough. The same will be true of electric cars. The concept that Clinton understands here is appeal to the masses. A politician telling a businessperson to pander to his desired constituents. How novel. PM Thu, 28 Feb 2013 04:28:55 -0500 I don't consider that to be 'whip-smart' advice. Because it came from President Clinton may have had an influence on Mr. Agassi. Pricing a product such as a car to accommodate the budget of an average Joe are merely fundamentals of doing business. Rad Thu, 28 Feb 2013 01:24:50 -0500 Thats got to be the dumbest, most ignorant, simplistic advice I have ever hear in my life. Why don't we just make everything free, then everything would move off the shelves......down right stupid. jamesxxxxx Wed, 27 Feb 2013 22:47:39 -0500 Agassi is a walking con-man, a bigot, who never actually accomplished anything but dropping names, and duping investors out of money. He burned through $700 Million of other people's money. Not much to show for it. $700M. That's a lot of money for a startup that is still truly in the 'proof of concept' stage, not even a validated business model. He's a testament to how big of a bluff you can pull with a smile, connections, acting the part ... wweebly Wed, 27 Feb 2013 22:17:47 -0500 have you no- shame, bill? <a href="" target="_blank" rel="nofollow" ></a> Bill is smart from the waist down lol caseyh Wed, 27 Feb 2013 22:15:49 -0500 His brilliant advice is to give away his very expensive product for free? Wow, call NASA...maybe he can get us to Pluto without rockets! AdamMKE Wed, 27 Feb 2013 22:14:10 -0500 Bill Clinton is whip smart. But "your price is to high" is hardly sage advice.