Let's talk about the future of Tesla Motors Club

[dsacks6]

Hi everyone,
I would like to talk to you about the future of this site and I need opinions and suggestions. I would love you guys who have devoted so much time into creating the content of this website, to also help decide what is going to happen with its future.
I understand that when this forum started, Tesla Motors was by far the most attention getting electric car company. But a lot seems to have changed. The industry is starting to get serious about electric cars, not just tesla motors.
I am thinking about converting tesla motors club into a more encompassing electric car forum. I feel it has reached the point where there is enough other exciting electric car news besides tesla motors.
I want to keep a section for tesla motors of course, especially because they seem to have been one of the catalysts for the interest to suddenly increased in electric cars and they continue to do important things in this field.

I welcome any suggestions from name of the website/forum, to the way everything is set up in organization, and the sites general aim. I do plan to continue trying to get some money generated from the site because I am still far from covering the costs of setting up the forum. Google ads do not bring in very much in comparison to sponsors. If anyone has any suggestion on how I can get a sponsor or knows of anyone who would like to sponsor now, or maybe further down the line, I would appreciate it.
I understand I could ask for money contributions to the site from our members, but I feel that you already give enough contributions through your content and posts. It is our members that make this site work ultimately, not me.

We are a crucial forum in this newly developing field and I believe we can contribute, through our ideas, to the evolution of the market.

Please share any ideas. I am even open to people getting involved with the website in anyway whether it be designing or even controlling certain aspects of the site. I would also like to link to other important electric car sites or green car sites and in turn have them link us.

Thank you and I look forward to your ideas.

[Cobos]

I would LIKE to be able to donate a bit to this site...considering the insane amount of time I spend on this site it seems only fair. Give us the option, if you think it's a bit wrong begging for donations hide the Paypal link somewhere.

As to the site, I would like the site to maintain it's name as the TMC. That name seems to be known and settled. I would consider just adding more subforums.
Add another Tesla News forums under the Tesla heading and rename the News and Video forum to cover all EV news and videos. Which is in many ways the way it is now...

Then consider splitting up the Electric Performance forum into maybe some specific brand based forums or some other split which seems natural.
That's my 2 cents anyway.

Cobos

[dsacks6]

My issue with keeping it Tesla Motors Club is that I don't want to limit the site as being basically Tesla Motors focused. Yes it made sense in the beginning but I'm not sure that it is best for this website to depend on Tesla Motors and its future. I want this site to be more flexible and as much as we can have subforums for other makes and as much as they may be active, Tesla Motors Club due to its name will remain focused on Tesla Motors.

When Tesla Motors was created, they were practially the only car company of its kind, but now that others are popping up like Fisker Automotive, I do not want this site, by its name to exclude them. I would like this site to have the opportunity to grow and I don't see Tesla Motors as being stimulation of growth. At the same time I do understand that this site was built upon enthusiasm for Tesla Motors mainly so I am trying to reconcile the idea of moving away from a Tesla Motors focused website. As long as this site remains teslamotorsclub, everything, even discussion about other companies in their own subforum, is generally talked about with tesla motors in mind. I do not want people to assume tesla motors is our main focus. I understand it may be our main focus right now, but I personally am a EV supporter before I am a Tesla Motors supporter, I can only speak for myself on that regard.

I do not want to make any quick decisions however, without consulting the members and hearing their ideas. I understand some of you see this place as your place to talk about Tesla Motors, but I really would like it to grow to be something even more influential.
So lets keep discussing!

[Laurent]

How about ElectricAutoClub.com or ElectricCarForums.com ?

[Bradleybang]

would not you then be

EV FORUM - ELECTRIC VEHICLE FORUM - ELECTRIC CAR

I see that site uses vbulletin. Maybe you could merge the members of the two and keep this as a subset. Split the cost and more members might get you to breakeven.
If you merged you could drop the teslamotorsclub name and i'd bet a San Carlos firm might buy the domain from you.

[Cobos]

I do see your point dsacks but the way I see it now we are discussing everything on the EV scene already regardless of the name. In many ways Tesla is a main focal point because it's the brand and products that create the biggest interest. But my main point was that the name TMC is already established. So you do not want to change that name, at least not this early. There are plenty of other EV/green sites, autobloggreen to mention one, and you do not want to destroy your own niche, or our niche
But I'm just one of the rather busy posters here, so see what the others think.

Cobos

[Jeff]

I visit this place almost everyday and often asked myself the same. Why not make this forum flexible beyond just Tesla? With so much electric vehicle happenings you'd be limiting future growth in a big way. While I respect Tesla, I agree it is time we move beyond Tesla only. I have been hitting up volt forums lately in unison with these because I want the complete package. Please expand! Make sure we know the new url first if you go through with this!

[TEG]

I like the idea of a more generalized forum now.

Now that Tesla is shipping real cars to real customers, perhaps it is time to leave this forum going primarily for actual Tesla owners, and restart your original plan of a general EV forum.

I think you still own the "ELECTRICPERFORMANCE.COM" domain that was your original site before you morphed it into a Tesla centric site.

I could take this offline to discuss with you, but I would consider being a moderator of such a site. Part of the reason I gave up my moderator status here was that Tesla PR referred to it as a "hostile" site which isn't something I want to be associated with.

Maybe I should just start my own site?

[Joseph]

Personally, the idea of changing the focus of the website doesn't interest me, but if you're idea is to have an all encompassing website on EVs, then eventually it will haev to happen.

The reason why this website is good is because the people here are so fervently obsessed with Tesla Motors. I love EVs in general, but the crown of the EV world, you have to admit, is Tesla Motors. If you are telling someone about EVs, and really want to capture their interest, what do you takd about? Tesla Motors.

If this were to became a generalized site, all the little details about the Roadster (like cup-holders and how its' keys look like) could fade away for more generalized talk. There might be less of the great people like Doug and TEG who dig up just-the-right-picture or that detail that no one else in the world except a Tesla fan would care about. If the webiste became more general, we would probably pick up less dedicated Tesla fans, and the quality of the forums could die down.

When I want all the info. about the Volt, I go gm-volt.com, which is an excellent website. I don't know of anywhere else where I get such a wealth of information. If that website were to expand its horizons, I imagine it would become too large and there just wouldn't be enough manpower to provide all the little tid-bits of info that make a website distinctly a fan website for Tesla Motors.

Then there is the problem with the name. How do you generalize a website that has the name 'Tesla Motors' in it? Changing its name would probably make the website lose its "brand name" so to speak. The average car guy who only hears about or pokes around this website every now or then, will probably be confused.

To me, it's like the neighborhood store that you go to when you have just one specific problem. You don't go to Home Depot because although you'll get what you need, the service won't be like it is at your neighborhood store.

If you do decide to change the website, I'd advise to wait a while. In my opinion, the right time to expand the website is when there are too many posts in the "Electric Performance Forum - Discussion about electric cars other than Tesla Motors" and it is becoming disorganized. As of now, that part of the website doesn't have any problems, so I don't think you should change the website until some traction starts.

For now, there is still no other "real" car company in the EV market besides Tesla Motors and GM. I think to open forums right now for these companies that don't even have working prototypes, would end you up with a bunch of silent forums.

When you do expand the website to accomodate for other EV manufacturers, I don't know what to say. I don't know anything about website design. But maybe just opening a different website would appropriate. Like how autoblog created autobloggreen. You could make the Chevy Volt Club or the Fisker Auto Club.

By the way, about sponsors. You should contact the editor of evworld.com. Evworld.com is big enough to have sponsors like Honda (which as you tell, I think is totally awesome) and AeroVironment, but still small enough to easily be able to talk to them. Their contact info is...

Editor
EVWorld.Com, Inc.
P.O. Box 461132
Papillion, Nebraska 68046
USA
editor@evworld.com

Maybe you can try talking to Plug In America. If you're on EVDL, you might get some help. Out of its 1,000+ members, there ought to be some good connections. Chelsea Sexton is on that list.

Ultimately, it's your website. Do what you want to do. Just don't change the website too much.

[graham]

There are other EV fora on the web, but I am not aware of another Tesla only site outside of TM themselves (and maybe Martin's blog). We would lose some exclusivity if we changed the purview of the site. However, if that happened, I wouldn't leave or anything. That is assuming that the same cast of characters stayed as well and the Tesla content remained high. I am interested enough in EVs in general that it could be interesting.

I would also be interested in donating monetarily to the site if a PayPal link were somewhere. I would not like this to be a subscription-only site, but I think it is very reasonable for those who hang out here a lot to help contribute if they have the means and are interested.

This site previously had various stability issues that I assume are from not handling high load well. Can the servers handle trying to attract more users and expanding our content?