Geezer with a Grudge: Losing Money on Every Unit?

May 26, 2017

Losing Money on Every Unit?

This story is awfully familiar: “The Electric Car’s Same Old Problem.” The quote that sums up the whole problem is from Fiat Chrysler’s Sergio Marchionne, “I hope you don’t buy it because every time I sell one it costs me $14,000.” I keep hearing through unconfirmable sources that Zero has yet to sell a motorcycle for a profit. I hope it isn’t true, but I suspect it is. Things change, but often pioneers take it in the shorts in the early stages. I remember Adam Osborne’s Trump-like claim for how his company was going to make money selling computers, “I lose money on every unit, but make up for it in quantity.”

After the shake-up this week at Ford, mostly over EVs and autonomous vehicle sales, it will be interesting to see if ANYONE makes it to the goal post with an electric car.

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The Geezer Story

I stumbled upon this column name (Geezer with a Grudge) almost 20 years ago, in 1999. The first Minnesota Motorcycle Monthly editor I worked with, in late 1999, complained that the magazine was getting no mail and the editors wanted to know if any readers were still out there. I fired off a sarcastic note, as a joke, intended to provide a little humor and some feedback. He published it as an article and later called me to say he'd received more mail on that letter than he'd received in the past year! I followed that with an offer to write a monthly column attempting to piss off a particular section of the magazine's readership to see if that tactic would generate some mail.

It did, probably more regularly than the magazine wanted at times, and I wrote a monthly column for MMM until the magazine died in 2018.

I plan to post an occasional old Geezer article into the blog, followed by short comments about the current status of my perspective on our activity/sport/vehicle of choice.