The Flying Car!- New to World Product?
"Terrafugia is a small, privately held corporation that is developing a roadable aircraft dubbed the Transition. Their General Aviation (GA), Light-Sport Aircraft (LSA) is designed to fold its wings, enabling the vehicle to also operate as a street-legal road vehicle. It is the sole registered automobile manufacturer in Massachusetts."
In my opinion, this "transition vehicle" is a completely new product rather than line or brand extension, which is a new line added to an existing product mix. In this case, I see the transition vehicle as being a risky new product for the world.
Terrafugia is currently in the introduction stage of the product life cycle! In turn, Terrafugia has great challenges keeping them from moving to the growth stage and Maturity (optimal stage) in the long-run!
The key to making sure successful introduction to the market has to do with focusing on distribution channels and relationships with distributors. Also, Terrafugia has to be sure that the customers understands their products relative advantage, compatibility, coplexity, observability, and Triability.
Compatible: needs to be compatible with how people like to fulfill that need. For example, parking the vehicle at home and pumping gas in the gas station. Also, gas milage should be substantial enough for people to commit to the product in the long-run.
Complex: the more complex, the slower to diffuse to the world {move slower through innovation curve (rate of adoption/diffusion)} Therefore, their model shouldn't differ too much from the functionality of a typical commuter vehicle.
Observability: show how easy and reliable the car's take-off is on media channels like youtube.com ( like the video I posted below!)
Trialability: Have them located at a specialty dealership for Terrafugia vehicles that accommodates for test Drives!
Unfortunately, substantial costs arise with this kind of projects because of research and development costs and promotional budgets for consumers and distributors. Therefore, there's a chance Terrafugia may never get to the maturity stage in the life-cycle.
Personally, at this prototype stage, the looks don't do it for me. For this reason, I'm hoping that this company succeeds in integrating itself far into the new product cycle, reaching maturity; in this way, they will get resources needed to work on new designs and attract new competitors in order to bring down the hefty price range of 200-250 thousand dollars!!!
