Local Motors Reviews

This company is so misguided it’s sad. The original concept, which was about 17 pivots and a few business models ago, had some serious potential. But, for whatever flicker of brilliance the CEO had in his original model, that has all but been extinguished by his (mis)management and the C-Suite he has hired to agree with him. Management has gotten so appallingly nearsighted that strategy documents were only out six months into the future. Year on year the company looks entirely different from products to purpose. Whether this was done to appease investors or ego, it has destroyed any chance for future success. The company has been through multiple models, numerous funding rounds, and after nearly a decade still has no real path to enough revenue to pay for the bloated operational costs racked up by the hubris of the CEO, let alone any chance for profitability. There is still no concrete vision for what the company should be when it grows up. The only consistent vision the CEO had was the desire to open more Microfactories, it now has six facilities internationally, costing insane amounts every month just to keep the lights on, but all together generate little to no revenue. This expansion without growth was something everyone outside of the C-Suite was uncomfortable with, but the expansion happened over the silenced objections of those who actually understood that opening locations costs money, which they weren’t making as a company. The company seemed to shift focus to whatever buzzword or industry jargony word was getting headlines at the time regardless of the core competencies of the underlying business. This was used to create headlines and raise capital, but there was almost no ability to bank on the company to execute the promises and statements the CEO made in public presentations or to investors. The company evolved into caricature to generate investment and not an actual business venture. The CEO spends most of his time raising funds, and the rest micromanaging details, which in the long run meant nothing to overall company direction. He is so detached from the regular functioning of the company, that any calls he makes usually derail any chance of success his team is trying to achieve in spite of him. When it counts the CEO almost always makes the wrong call, and he has yet to show the ability to lead, let alone push and guide his team through the inevitable difficulties that come with a startup. When it gets hard for the company, he pivots to something else, which seems “easier” or at very least is popular at the time and can milk it for some more headlines and investment capital. The CMO (as described in other reviews) is a complete disaster; the fact that she is even at the company and allowed to run a division is a prime and glaring example of just how bad the CEO is at running the company. She was hired over the objections of other (former) C-Suite members, and she remains over the objections of just about anyone who has worked with or for her or regularly interacted with her. The epic waste of investor funds on advertising for products they couldn’t or didn’t sell was maddening to say the least. Every single campaign that the CMO ran had a massive cost due to either terrible ideas or her use of vendors who were 10 times the price for half the work, and all of these efforts netted ZERO return on investment. And to top it off the internal marketing department still doesn’t do any research. The company is still shooting in the dark when it comes to product market fit. Anything LM has created has been guesswork (pulled out of thin air) with no research, or “charisma” in negotiations, the CEO’s degree pedigree is basically all they are banking on at this point. The CFO has one glaring problem, he is forced to say yes to every expense. He is either not allowed or incapable of telling the CEO and CMO no. It’s difficult if not impossible to financially right a ship when it is constantly spending and taking on debt/and diluting equity to do so. It would be one thing if they spent money wisely, but I think the only entity in existence worse at wasteful spending is the federal government. Co-Creation would be awesome if LM actually did it, but to this point Local Motors has still not co-created an entire vehicle. It has been used for industrial design and a couple of other projects, but it has not been used for any real engineering. It feels like the company doesn’t even buy its own line about using the crowd to make things faster and cheaper, because it barely uses the few community members it has kept. This platform could be the only reason the company exists and makes money, as is the only part of the company that has been monetized in the slightest. But, the platform has been managed so poorly up to this point the former CIO never put the effort into making it right, and under the CMO it will never succeed because she is incapable of the job. Internally there were and are some people who understand how this company could actually make money and run like a real business, but none of them are listened to. Sadly, any negative internal commentary has been silenced, or eliminated from the company. It’s now impossible to internally say, “that’s a bad idea” or “we are going the wrong direction” as dissent is something that is no longer allowed. Employees stopped taking surveys for fear of reprisals, and many stopped answering truthfully for fear they would be found out after the company conducted witch hunts for bad reviewers. Do not trust the #alternatefacts which have been released by LM in the form of 5 star reviews. They were and are 100% marketing spin for the multitude of truthful terrible reviews being posted here.

Everything started to go bad around November of 2013, when our CEO pushed Local Motors from being a “crowd sourced” company to a “co-creation” platform. a year earlier we lost our awesome co-founder/ head of sales and later our head of marketing, soon after we lost all of our "top tier" talent and stopped major production of the Rally Fighter. The company stopped listening to the public and began to listen to a chosen set of a select few people who know nothing about how to make, design, manufacture and sell vehicles. We opened a new factory in a bad location, our CEO absorbed an outside marketing agency (and CMO) that led a “fake it till you make it” strategy and we stopped building real-world products in order to ride of the tech bubble with the hype of 3D printed vehicles, something we knew nothing about. Post 2014, the company started to get set up for one specific purpose, to WOW investors; from the people/equipment they hire to partners they choose to work with. The company is a startup financial machine; they constantly claim that they are a start-up in order to attract more interest from investors. Every couple of years they re-brand the entire company and change internal strategy based on what the top buzzword of the tech industry search engine is for that particular era. A constant re-branding needs a large marketing department, so this company has a big one and it is run by a very unique CMO (who is very effective at the "fake it" thing). I wont get into the details as the other reviews showcase the CMO and marketing department well. The engineering department is the second most important department as it is responsible for the prototype vehicles. With the way the company is structured, engineering is bypassed and the CEO/CMO gets to publish what is happening in product development, this is a problem. Other figureheads and departments publish information relating to vehicles weight, performance, range, level of autonomy right out of thin air and push this out to the real world. This can be very frustrating when you are an engineer and have to try and meet already published, what looks to be factual, information. There is complicated by the additional problem in that engineers do not have access to the budget or set parameters necessary to accomplish the simplest of tasks (like a widely used CAD program and a standardized sheet format). As an engineer you get to be an overqualified mechanic that gets to assemble prototype vehicles in a short period of time; its fun work but not proper. Local Motors rides off the coattails of other companies and there is little, if any groundbreaking research and development relating to the technology/autonomous/additive manufacturing sector being done in house. In summary, you get to make vehicles that appear to function properly, heavy emphasis on the "appear" part. As an assembler, fabricator or technician your job is to support engineering when the time arises to make another buzzword prototype vehicle. This can mean very long hours, time away from family and trips on the road and working for high level superiors that are taking advantage of, and not fostering your talents and unique skills that would otherwise be in continual development. Lastly, the company has a overwhelming number of employees in upper management. An overwhelming majority of employees in the company has the title "Director, VP, product/project manager" or something similar. Most of these employees come from other companies with little to no senior level experience (including the CEO, CMO, and COO). This company loves to throw job titles around whenever an employee is ready to leave as a bargaining chip, they are not earned over years of time like in other companies. As a result, almost all employees in upper management lack talent, are selfish, overpaid and also quite narcissistic.