Quote:
Originally Posted by DMcCunney
As an example, I was involved in a discussion elsewhere on taxicabs, and the desirability of a model designed to be a cab for major metropolitan areas like NYC. In NYC, "livery" cabs require licenses from the city Taxi and Limousine Commission. To operate a taxi, you must have a medallion. Medallions are in limited quantities. New ones are occasionally auctioned by the city, and the going price the last I heard was about $75,000. At any one time, there are about 12,000 livery cabs on the street in NYC.
Another participant in the discussion is an engineer at GM. He managed to avoid rolling on the floor laughing at the idea that GM could produce a vehicle for a market of about 15,000, but it wasn't easy. They can't. They'd need a market about 30 times that large to even think about it. They are simply too big, with too much overhead, to produce that few of a model profitably.
|
I agree - that's the kind of area where small companies can profitably fill a niche market.
To use your example, London taxis (which I'm sure everyone's seen on TV, if not in person) are made by a (relatively) small company called "Manganese Bronze" (
http://www.manganese.com). They produce a specialist product for a specialist market (the average London taxi has a lifetime of about 30 years, and is designed for that purpose). It's something that no "mainstream" car manufacturer could possibly compete at.