Can Cadillac ELR Take On Tesla?

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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The Cadillac division of General Motors Co. (NYSE: GM) would like luxury car shoppers to believe its new ELR electric car is a better vehicle than a Tesla Motors Inc. (NASDAQ: TSLA) Model S. Cadillac goes so far as to make the contrast explicit as a tries to market the ELR. Unfortunately for the U.S. car brand, Tesla has several advantages. This is among the reasons that GM’s luxury division has struggled as it tries to match the sale of major imports.

On paper, the ELR and Model S are mostly equivalent vehicles. The Cadillac carries a price of $75,000 to the Tesla’s $69,000. Each has features that are standard on most luxury cars. These include traction and stability control and 50,000 mile warranties. However, consumers who take a closer look will find important differences. First, the ELR is really not an electric car at all. It has small gas engine that can power the car when its electric charge has run out. If the Tesla is considered the car of the future, the ELR is a hybrid from the past, not terribly different from the aged Chevy Volt.

READ ALSO: 10 Cars Americans Don’t Want To Buy

Another difference between the two cars is that the Cadillac has front-wheel drive to the Tesla’s rear-wheel drive. And the Cadillac is a coupe while the Tesla is a four-door sedan.

Cadillac also suffers from an image problem that probably hurts the sales of all its models. Americans clearly prefer imported luxury cars. BMW, Audi, Lexus and Mercedes handily outsell Cadillac, along with Ford Motor Co.’s (NYSE: F) Lincoln luxury brand.

But the primary drawback the ELR has is that consumers who want a true electric car will turn down the Cadillac before they start shopping.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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