The price of gasoline was rising as the first Wheegos rolled out this spring.
Not that higher prices were going to touch off a surge of buyers for the all-electric vehicle — changing cars isn’t like switching radio stations.
Besides, the Atlanta-based company isn’t building the cars all that fast anyhow. Wheego Electric Cars is planning a long ramp-up to rapid production with a parallel climb in consumer acceptance. But higher pump prices sure help.
“When gas is $3 a gallon, there’s interest in electric vehicles,” said CEO Mike McQuary. “When gas is $4 a gallon, there is extreme interest. I think $4 is definitely the tipping point. And I don’t think we’ll see $3 a gallon again.”
McQuary, who co-wrote the business plan for MindSpring Enterprises, came to Atlanta to help run that idiosyncratic Internet upstart. On his watch, the customer base went from about a thousand to 5 million after merging with EarthLink.
A couple of years later, McQuary left. He started Brash Music, an independent record label, and, with several other entrepreneurs, formed a private equity investment and consulting firm.
The road to Wheego started when he saw the documentary “Who Killed the Electric Car?”
He was struck by the interviews with people who had been briefly allowed to lease electric vehicles — and loved them.
“The only other time I heard voices like that was when I worked in MindSpring,” he said. “It rang a bell in my head. Because if you treat customers well, if you make them part of what you do, they will be almost evangelical in spreading world about that vehicle.”
Wheego is still in its infancy. Today marks just a month since the official launch. The number of full-time corporate employees can be counted on your fingers. The number of cars coming off the California assembly line in a week might not fill a restaurant parking lot. The only dealership in metro Atlanta selling Wheegos is Jim Ellis.
Among the other electric vehicles on the market are the Nissan Leaf, which lists for the same price as the Wheego but with a global company’s backing; and the Tesla, a flashier car costing more than three times as much.
When McQuary talks about Wheego’s plans, he sometimes scoffs at the companies that annually sell millions of vehicles. He delights in hiring ex-MindSpring staffers whose main experience was in providing Internet service. He talks glowingly about the customer-centric approach of Apple Computer.
And he plans to change the automotive world.
Q: How much trouble has it been to raise money?
A. When I left MindSpring, I must have had 50 people shake my hand and tell me, ‘The next time that you find a MindSpring, tell me so I can invest in it,’ and here, I’ve got it. But when I go to investment conferences, everybody sits with their hands folded. They have this chance, and they are passing on it.
Because of all of that has happened [in the economy], when it comes to the investment community, people are much more cautious. The ability to raise significant money in Atlanta is really, really tough.
Q: So, do you have enough money?
A: I have had enough to do exactly what needed to be done, just not what I wanted.
Q: Do you drive the Wheego at home?
A: Sometimes. But it’s for two people. With four kids, a minivan is the way to haul family around. Look, gas-powered cars are not going to disappear, but a lot of people are going to have a second vehicle. What electric will not work for are long trips and when you are towing something.
Q: Isn’t it strange to have a car company hiring ex-MindSpring people?
A: Culturally, the two companies are pretty darned close. You are always under pressure to hire the next perfect person, but you have to be patient. Getting the person who fits with the values you want is much more important in the long run than just getting someone with the job skills.
Q: Can you talk about those values? What do you hope to bring to this business?
A: Surveys show car salesmen with low respect. That is because so many car salesmen have an emphasis on selling the car and getting that customer off the lot. I am not setting sales goals. If I set certain sales numbers, people would only be worried about selling to somebody new, not taking care of the customers that we have.
Q: But aren’t there clear economic incentives to do that?
A: In certain industries, I think there are practices that are obvious but are wrong. ... We are going to make calls to customers. And customers are all going to have my email address and my phone number. People say, ‘How can you do that?’ Well, 5 million people in MindSpring had my email address and phone.
Q: But how do you handle any problems you have?
A: With tech stuff, something is going to go wrong. It does. And we are launching something that depends on a lot of technology — things are going to go wrong. What is important is the way we react to things going wrong. And that we react quickly. We are trying to bring that mentality to the car business.
I am making cars in batches of 100 and, if somebody makes a suggestion that will improve something, I am going to do it for the cars in the next batch. Let’s not wait until the next model year.
Q: You will change the car based on suggestions from customers?
A: We put out 300 low-speed versions (of the Wheego) and we made the (dashboard) display as similar as possible to gas-powered cars. And the feedback was: No. They’d say, ‘I was really disappointed that the display wasn’t more futuristic.’ Or, ‘I thought the display would be digital.’ So, we looked at each other and thought, boy, are we dummies. And we changed it.
Too many times, employees of a company feel like they know more about what the customer wants than the customer knows. I understand — you get that feedback, and it makes you feel stupid. But you’ve got to be able to park your ego.
We put in a way that, when you stop at a light, you can scroll through and see how the car is going and what kind of battery life you’ve got, what your torque is, how much range you’ve got. People want to be able to see. And the whole thing is software, so, hey, if you want to, you can rewrite the code and modify how the car operates. Of course, once you do that, you’ve taken yourself off the warranty grid.
About the Author
