\n<\/p>\n
GM\u2019s EVs have been on a roll lately. After selling just the Chevy Bolt for years, a wave of new models \u2014 now up to 17 fully electrified vehicles \u2014 has pushed the automaker into second place in the U.S. behind Tesla.\u00a0<\/p>\n
How did it get there? With a little help from a Tesla veteran.<\/p>\n
GM board member Jon McNeil was president of Tesla during the development and introduction of the Model 3, a crucial period of the company\u2019s growth. One of the things he credits for Tesla\u2019s success is how Elon Musk ran product meetings.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cNo slides was our first rule,\u201d McNeil told the audience earlier this month at TC All Stage in Boston. \u201cYou have to be reviewing real product.\u201d<\/p>\n
Every week, senior leadership would sit down with product leaders to review their progress. The practice was inspired by an encounter Musk had with Steve Jobs, McNeil said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was this belief that I think is true: Steve Jobs didn\u2019t have a ton of time or patience for Elon in the early days. And early in the early days, Elon would try to chase Steve down at events and parties in Silicon Valley for advice. And Steve didn\u2019t like Elon, and so would often turn his back to him when he approached him.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cBut one night, Elon got lucky and said, \u2018Steve, if you had one piece of advice for me as a young entrepreneur\u2019 \u2014 he had just just done PayPal and was joining the team at Tesla \u2014 \u2018what would that be?\u2019 Steve said, \u2018Elon, you\u2019re now in the hardware business, but the hardware business is a lot like the software business. If you want to be successful in business, you have to get one thing right, and that is, you have to have a perfect product. And if the product is beautiful, it will sell itself.\u201d<\/p>\n
Techcrunch event<\/p>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSan Francisco<\/span> Musk took that to heart, McNeil said, and the concept of a perfect product became central to product development at Tesla.<\/p>\n \u201cThe thing we were looking for first of all was surprise and delight. Like, are we doing something that is going to just make somebody go wow or laugh or have fun?\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cCrazy example of that is the fart button,\u201d McNeil said, referring to a software button labeled \u201cEmissions Testing Mode\u201d that would simulate flatulence through the car\u2019s speakers.\u00a0<\/p>\n The company also prized minimalism, which on the software side meant keeping functions accessible in fewer than two taps on the screen.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt has to be a kind of a no brainer for the average user. Then we would double back the designer \u2014 the lead designer was always in the room \u2014 and then we would say, OK, Franz, now make it beautiful.\u201d<\/p>\n Meetings like those, where the actual product was reviewed, not a mockup, helped preserve Tesla\u2019s culture as it grew, McNeil said. \u201cYou can imagine the culture that gets communicated when people are bringing their A game to the CEO every week. Because you\u2019re not going to bring your B game to the CEO \u2014 especially that CEO, because he\u2019s going to fire you,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cThat keeps that company on a one-week cadence of innovation. Every week they\u2019re making progress because of the product reviews.\u201d<\/p>\n McNeil left Tesla in early 2018. In 2022, he was added to the board at GM.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cOne of the things I\u2019m most proud of is Mary Barra, CEO, and Mark Reuss, president, [who oversee] a 275,000 person, $200 billion revenue company, are running product reviews every week where there\u2019s no slides. You\u2019ve got to see the real product [whether it\u2019s] hardware, software. If it\u2019s hardware, it\u2019s in the room. You\u2019re touching it. You\u2019re feeling it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cThat stuff is so powerful. And it\u2019s led to GMs introduction of 17 EVs, now the second best selling EVs in the country. Because they\u2019re just on product, every week.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" GM\u2019s EVs have been on a roll lately. After selling just the Chevy Bolt for years, a wave of new models \u2014 now up to 17 fully electrified vehicles \u2014 has pushed the automaker into second place in the U.S. behind Tesla.\u00a0 How did it get there? With a little help from a Tesla veteran.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12535,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[6167,788,6166,513,455,6165,3945,1381,6164],"class_list":{"0":"post-12534","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-innovative","9":"tag-key","10":"tag-mockups","11":"tag-products","12":"tag-real","13":"tag-reviewing","14":"tag-staying","15":"tag-tesla","16":"tag-vet"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12534"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12534\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOctober 27-29, 2025<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n