In March, with hundreds of millions of dollars sunk into the project, trial production completed and showrooms already opened, Honda and Sony pulled the plug on their joint electric-vehicle brand, Afeela, pinning the blame on weakening demand for E. V. s.
Add Afeela to the pile of subbrands from major automakers that experienced some success, until they didn’t. These famous flameouts and flops include Think from Ford, Scion from Toyota and Saturn from General Motors.
With an out-the-door price above $100,000 and a sedan body style competing in an S. U. V. -dominant market, Afeela was starting out with several strikes against it.
“A car with a 300-mile range is not mind-blowing,” said Randy Barone, vice president of ACV Auctions, a wholesale automotive auction company. “And at prices up to $120,000, you’re not listening to the consumer. ” Jim Johnson, a vice president at VDX.
TV, a provider of online advertising, said, “The name Afeela sounds like a tech company, and it turned some people off. Consumers asked, ‘Would the company be around in five years. Am I willing to invest in this. ’ They would have needed a long-term branding push.
” By contrast, brands including Acura, Infiniti, Lexus and, more recently, Genesis are perceived as unique marques rather than just spinoffs of their parent companies.
To reach this point, they’ve had to invest billions in product development, product differentiation and heavy marketing to establish a value proposition for consumers. “It would have been cheaper for G. M.
to have purchased Toyota than it was to create Saturn,” said Jake Fisher, the senior director for auto testing at Consumer Reports. We are having trouble retrieving the article content. Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings. Thank you for your patience while we verify access.
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