The world of electric vehicles has a naming problem. Toyota sells something that rhymes with “bees-forks,” Volkswagen might not have left enough room between the ID.3 and ID.4, and Audi’s even-number program ought to lead to a little showroom confusion. However, when you have successful branding for EV technology, you stick with it. Well, unless you’re GM, in which case, what do you do? That’s right, you get rid of it entirely. The Ultium branding is dead, but the cells themselves will live on.
At the same time, bankrupt EV startup Fisker continues to shoot itself in the foot, Dacia has a new crossover with a moderately amusing name, and Volkswagen wants to be abundantly clear that what you’re about to see isn’t the new U.S.-market Tiguan. Alrighty.
Yep, we’ve got all of this coming up on today’s edition of The Morning Dump. Matt has left me in charge this morning and, oh boy, here we go. So, make yourself a cup of tea or coffee or even a cappuccino, pull up a chair, and pretend to be working. Here’s a run-down of all the bite-size car news you need to know about this morning.
GM Kills The Ultium Name
Why is it that so few automakers seem to know how to market EVs? From meaningless alphabet soup names to shuffling branding, it seems that brands including Toyota and Mercedes-Benz have set themselves up for a dead-end in the future. The latest example of a car company playing with EV branding? General Motors. After years of thumping the Ultium trade name for electric vehicle batteries, GM announced at an investor day that the company’s through with that. As Reuters reports:
One focus at GM’s event is its Ultium Cells battery technology, which investors saw during tours of the battery and EV assembly operations at the company’s Tennessee plant.
The automaker will no longer use the Ultium name on its batteries, Kurt Kelty, head of battery cells, said. Moving forward, GM will be more flexible with battery chemistry and configuration, he said. Moving away from the Ultium name is significant for GM’s branding of EVs, especially after the company highlighted it in Super Bowl advertisements.
Wow, imagine having the resources to spend Super Bowl money pumping a carefully crafted brand name, only to throw it in the bin a few years later. Of course, the subtext here is that GM may use non-Ultium cells in some future electric vehicles, but this begs several questions, not the least of which is why GM would sacrifice pumping its moonshot to level the perceived playing field with other cells. Mind you, a singular name like this may need to be killed anyway before future-generation cells result in branding jumping the shark with Ultium “Like A Rock” Solid-State Cells or something like that. Anyway, I guess if you’re a major automaker looking to launch a next-generation EV push, keep it simple and avoid spending a whole bunch of money on branding that’ll be thrown away soon anyway.
Fisker Will Have To Pay For Recalls After All
Last month, we reported that bankrupt electric vehicle startup wanted owners to pay for labor costs associated with recalls. Well, that bold move has worked its way through the legal system, and to the surprise of absolutely nobody, the Department of Justice has effectively told Fisker to get bent, and that all costs of recalls are solely the responsibility of the manufacturer. As Reuters reports:
As a part of Fisker’s bankruptcy plan, the manufacturer is required to remedy defective and noncompliant vehicles “without charge when the vehicle … is presented for remedy,” the filing showed.
Fisker did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
The Justice Department also said that the part of the plan where vehicle owners could get reimbursed for paying for repairs out of their pocket also violates the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act.
At this point, it’s astonishing that Fisker thought it could get away with sticking owners with labor bills for recall work. Like, who thought this was a good idea? Just when we thought we know what rock-bottom looked like, someone tunnels through the bedrock. Anyway, from here out, Fisker Ocean owners holding off on recall work should be entitled to get it performed for free, and owners who paid out of pocket will likely be compensated.
This Is Not The New Volkswagen Tiguan
This is the new Volkswagen Taryon, and for a while, everyone thought that it would be identical to the next U.S.-market Volkswagen Tiguan. It turns out, that’s not quite the case, and Volkswagen even launched a preemptive media release strike, stating that:
While this model is widely reported to represent the next version of the Tiguan for the U.S. market, be advised that while the U.S. Tiguan will receive the long-wheelbase setup of this model, the sheetmetal, powertrain options and equipment set will differ markedly. More details about the U.S. Tiguan offer will be forthcoming later this year.
So, this seven-seat compact crossover isn’t the next Tiguan for America, but it might be sorta close. At a minimum, the platform underneath will be the same, and it wouldn’t be surprising if some of the interior tech carries over, but the resulting vehicle will look different to the long-wheelbase Taryon. Actually, maybe it’s a good thing that styling will be revised. Hold that thought.
Does What It Says On The Tin
Good news! Dacia has unveiled a new car. It’s a two-row family crossover that’s a little bit longer than a European-market Volkswagen Tiguan, has door handles on the C-pillars like a Nissan Xterra, and although it’s basically a Duster from the cowl forward, the back half of this car is substantially larger than that of Dacia’s existing crossover. The best bit? It’s said to start at less than €25,000 including VAT, and once you subtract VAT and convert to American dollars, and that’s less than $23,000 for a spacious family crossover.
However, the best part of this entire affair is the name. See, instead of plucking something from the heritage books, Dacia’s called it the Bigster. Like a Duster but a bit bigger, the Bigster. There’s something delightful about that. Imagine if the Toyota Grand Highlander was called the Big Highlander, or the GMC Yukon XL was called the Yukon Big. There’s just something inherently entertaining about it that I can’t quite put my finger on.
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
Sometimes you just want to listen to some gloriously trashy EDM, and this track from Ninajirachi and MGNA Crrrta scratches that itch perfectly. The vocal slices, masonry saw-like synths, and absolutely bombastic kicks sound straight out of 2011, but the ultra-fast pace and sheer intensity of DAW layering are products of an extremely online generation. Yeah, “Angel Music” dropped just last month, and it’s quickly become a favorite. Long live excess, long live maximalism, long live the party.
Your Turn
So, which EV-specific branding do you reckon will be the next to fall after Ultium? I reckon it could be the Toyota convention bZ4X fits into, but there are also some continuity problems with the naming of Mercedes-Benz’s EQ lineup in relation to its combustion models.
(Photo credits: GMC, Fisker, Volkswagen, Dacia)
Please be Mercedes-EQ. Please be Mercedes-EQ. PLEASE be Mercedes-EQ.
No one calls it that! No one WANTS to call it that when you’re talking about a Mercedes-EQ EQB 250+ or whatever. Good grief, that’s redundant. I thought the Germans were into efficiency? What is this crap?! Who did this? Who hurt them???
Mercedes-EQ is so idiotic. Benz has an E that could, I don’t know, be graphically represented in some shade of green, contrasting with whatever neutral colour they chose for the other three letters. I mean, go crazy, call it benz, lowercase b, bold e, whatever. Literally anything they could do with a 4 letter word that’s already a part of their history and brand recognition would be better than EQ.
Mercedes-EQ belongs on a stereo, not on a trunklid.
“Fisker Will Have To Pay For Recalls After All”
With what? Surely by now the execs have bled every drop from that stone to offshore accounts.
GM should have stuck to their guns and called them Delco batteries.
I don’t see why the branding was needed to begin with, other than the previous mentioned “Wall Street” folk. Us norms don’t care, just tell me the range and charging time.
This is really weird. Usually GM doesn’t kill a brand or product until it’s well-regarded by customers. The Universe is going topsy-turvy!
Ultium (RIP) was a brand created for Wall Street not Main Street. It was intended to convey that GM was developing unique battery tech that would make them into a Tesla rival.
Now that Ultium turns out to be not such a special thing and EVs are not such a special market, there is no reason to invest marketing money to have it as a brand anymore. They get one more parting PR shot by announcing that it is no longer a thing.
MGNA CRRRTA – artificial singing with branding by Amazon. Fortunately one can watch the video with the sound off.
It wouldn’t be GM if they weren’t dropping names constantly.
Nahh.. I think that crown goes to Google
Pfft, Google would kill the battery tech as well.
Yes, Google would have just shut down all battery tech as well.
“So, which EV-specific branding do you reckon will be the next to fall after Ultium?”
I agree that EQ from from Mercedes will die. Also the VW ID model name idiocy will die eventually as well… or I predict it will.
Instead of Toyotafying their styling, I wish VW would just Toyotafy their running gear. The last few years really have suffered with the ugly stick whacking everything coming off the assembly line.
I want to root for Volkswagen. I have one and I have a Porsche, which is related! I’ve always had a big soft spot for Volkswagens!
…but my gosh, I can NOT get behind the new ones. Frustrating interior controls, gaudy touches on the outside like lighted logos (yuck) — what are they doing? Put the physical controls back in the interior and stop trying to cater to the lowest common denominator with the exterior styling, for Pete’s sake. I liked VWs because they were simple and clean designs that were kinda friendly and cute, too. The ID cars come closer to that than the rest of the line, but have the absolute worst interior controls this side of a Tesla, for Pete’s sake.
wouldn’t it be more like Bigon and Biglander? Would the Subruban become a Bighoe?
Insert Beavis and Butthead laughing at Bighoe.
Maybe Porsche not calling an electric car a “turbo”?
Bigster…
Bigster?
…
Bigster
I was behind a Fisker Ocean in traffic this morning. I was thinking, “This poor schlep. He’s stuck with a car that’s not just an orphan, it’s a ghost, with absolutely zero factory support going forward.”
And I’m sure he still owes $50k on the thing.
“Wow, imagine having the resources to spend Super Bowl money pumping a carefully crafted brand name, only to throw it in the bin a few years later.”
The auto business, in a nutshell.
This might be one of the dumbest sentences I’ve ever read. Moving away from an brand name is significant? Who fucking cares. Names don’t sell cars. Good cars sell.
I don’t disagree that car names are mostly meaningless.
I take it you’re not one of those folks who were deeply offended when Ford slapped the Mustang name on the Mach E, or the Capri name on a restyled VW ID4?
It’s significant because they spent a fortune gaining that brand recognition factor (such that it is), which huge companies and marketing and MBAs will pound the table about the importance of, even if the product sucks—but, hey they have heard of it! I think it was misguided in terms of the public, but it was probably meant more to appeal to investors who were throwing money at anything with “EV” attached to it, anyway. Of course, normal people (and even weirdos like me) know that a good name might sell something the first time* (if it’s cheap, so not a car), but bad product won’t earn repeat sales. Unfortunately, we’re talking about trained circus animals with corporate influence.
At least I’ll credit them with having a name for a battery when most companies can’t even bother to name their models anything but unmemorable alphabet soup designations.
*probably close to half of my CD collection from the ’90s.
Good products precede brand recognition though. Making the time spent on branding a waste. Every successful brand that is simply the founders surname are perfect examples.
Rather than trying to trick people into buying a GM product they should just make a product people want to buy. Because that’s all marketing is; white lies to convince someone of something that may or may not be true.
Tell that to modern marketing. It’s rare for that to be the case as it’s rare for there to be quality products anymore. More often, they’re names of products that used to be good being exploited to sell junk at higher prices or slightly-better-than-junk at the same price the once-quality item sold at. As cynical a take as I’m giving on this, brand recognition is still important, though. How else does one stand out in a sea of similar products? If someone doesn’t know you from the fifteen hacks and you know reviews are fake, how do they know yours is the product they want? If you’re selling tchotchkes from China or bottom barrel knock offs, then you can sell them under any number of randomly generated brand-non-brand names as long as you’ve got the right key words to show up on a search and undercut the other makers, but in the creative field or on larger purchases, it’s still important to have a recognizable name. Would people buy bland Toyotas were it not for the name that is associated with being reliable? Well, Scion came and went rather quickly, so…. Of course, Toyota is a brand name that stands for particular traits that many people are looking for and Ultium was new. If they were going to establish a new family of EV drivetrains under that name umbrella that happened to be top of the field, then it would have meant something. Of course, quality product would have also sold, but the name made it easier to remember and talk about as its own thing, which helps sell. Setting aside my feeling that it was more for investors than the GP, I also don’t think it was meant to last forever in the first place, only until their EVs became the only or the main product, whereupon, it would have served its purpose and could be dropped. Ultimately, the problem with Ultium was the problems, so it got dropped early.
Right, that’s an example of good product preceding the value in the brand name.
Toyota only equals reliable because they made and continue to make reliable vehicles; proving my point again. Product wins every time. When Toyota came out people didn’t buy it because it was called a Toyota Corolla. They bought it because it was better than the competition. Only then did the Toyota name have value.
You did it again. They have to build a good product for the name to mean anything; top of the field. They could have named the drivetrain anything, and if it were good, that name now equals good.
So, the reason the brand failed was why? Because of problems with the product? That sounds an awful lot like you must have a good product in order for a brand to mean anything.
Since you cherry picked the Toyota quote and clearly ignored my point about Scion’s failure—a brand made by Toyota using Toyota platforms, this is my final answer: if you have a product that nobody knows about or means nothing, it doesn’t matter how good it is. You need a name to get attention so that people will try it and you need to meet or exceed expectations to build or sustain the brand. Just as a brand can be a detriment without a product worth selling, a product without a name won’t sell, either, with the exception of cheap junk people will roll the dice on that’s sold by key words on searches and those are not quality items. Both are needed, but if one were to pick only one, it’s far easier to sell a known brand than it is to sell a quality product nobody knows (Ferrari t-shirts, anyone? Hell, Maserati itself is largely junk that sells on a name or we could go with pretty much any number of cynically-made shitty movies that are remakes or franchises).
Ok, buddy. You keep thinking that. I’m not going to get through to you.
Good cars sell, but marketing sells as well. And name recognition is valuable, even if our little lizard brains aren’t always conscious of it.
Valuable name recognition only happens if the product is good though. Quality precedes a name being valuable.
You’re right! Tesla should give up on being called Tesla and be called ‘Elon Motors’ instead.
But Tesla doesn’t even advertise, kind of proving my point. Tesla is recognizable because it is a product people like.
Tesla didn’t have to advertise because they were the only game in town selling what was a far better product with more performance than anyone had seen in an EV. Add a bit of the myth of Elon as a genius and they got endless articles everywhere extolling the performance and looks, which did the advertising for them. So, yes, the product sold the brand, but in a more typically crowded market, one needs something to stand out. That’s why timing was so critical for Rivian and Lucid to come on the scene when they did—so that they could get themselves recognized in a small marketplace and establish their name before the big names were able to come in and drown them out and both of those marques (Rivian in particular, being trucks) staked out parts of the market that Tesla wasn’t really serving and set themselves apart by distinctive design. Even with all that, though, it took Tesla years to make money and much of that came from selling pollution credits. Rivian and Lucid are hanging on unprofitably with faith money. Ask the average person and they won’t have heard of either one. My sister never heard of Rivian and our neighbor has one (or had—I haven’t seen it for a while). The other part of this argument is the market itself. Want to build a new supercar, just have a standout product (or maybe not judging by all the ones that keep popping up that seem about the same to me) as the people buying 7-figure cars have money to throw away and other options if anything goes wrong with the product. Someone buying a daily/only car for around $40-50k generally can’t afford to roll the dice on an unknown quantity and so they fall back on a known name. The product might be new, but they trust the brand building it enough from its history to trust it more, be it in quality of the execution or in support if it turns out to suck.
Being a pioneer is part of having a good product. Go away, already.
“Names don’t sell cars. Good cars sell.”
Oh you sweet summer child….
Then prove me wrong.
Cadillac – 1972 – 1985. Why buy a Caddy when a Buick is cheaper? Land Rover – qualitatively one of the poorest quality brands on the market for the last 15 years.
Those are brands that only had value because their product was once good. People are wise to the fact that their products are now shit and their sales numbers prove that. You didn’t prove anything.
I shouldn’t bother but:
“Sales of Land Rover in US has increased every year for the last 10 years. Their sales peaked in 2019 after selling 94,736. We expect them to continue their success in the US as the market for crossovers and SUVs continues to increase every year. Currently Land Rover imports all of its models for the US market from its factories in Halewood and Solihull, UK. The Range Rover Sport large SUV has been Land Rover’s best selling model in the United States since 2006 and even reached record sales in 2019.
Land Rover sales in the United States have been increasing steadily in recent years. In 2022, Land Rover sold 56,522 vehicles in the United States, up from 40,268 in 2021. This represents a 37% increase in sales.”
https://www.goodcarbadcar.net/land-rover-us-sales-figures/
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The Land Rover Reliability Rating is 2.5 out of 5.0, which ranks it 31st out of 32 for all car brands. This rating is based on an average across 345 unique models.
https://repairpal.com/reliability/land-rover
Ha. Perfect. See, was that so hard? But now do Cadillac…
Also, LR is still 30K behind their peak of 2019.