TV News - Phoning Car Manufacturers & People To Interview

After the Panasonic 4k Camera workshop George and I phoned up car manufacturers as well as some people George had planned to ask about an interview.

Car companies

• Tesla was the obvious choice as they are the pioneer worldwide for Electric cars, they were helpful and told us that they cannot pursue anything via a phone call but we had to contact the UK press office. Whilst this is frustrating as we cannot have a phone call and discuss the idea they seemed like the most "up for it" out of everyone we contacted. I have emailed Tesla and I hope they can get back to us before Tuesday when we are back as a group.
• BMW said that they were busy at the time of calling and promised a phone back.
• Renault and Nissan were the same as BMW and said that I would get a call back from the appropriate person but as of yet i have not got a phone call back.
• Hyundai stated they had a fully-electric car on their website however when I called they then said that this model is not available until 2018. Unfortunately we are going for fully-electric cars not hybrids right now however they are interested in the idea so we may get back in contact if we can see a use for a hybrid piece.
• Volkswagen was a bit of a mission to get someone to help but we finally got an email address for some place in north London that actually has a full-electric Golf however he was busy at the time (honestly whenever I walk into a car dealership they are empty) so we got an email in which I have contacted.
• Smart was super-confusing as we had Andrew's number provided as well as online but they all seemed to be wrong so we have held off on contacting them.
• Ford gave us no answer at all, George left a voicemail so we hope he will get a response.

At first that does not seem super promising but it was a big task to be confident enough to make these calls for me personally so I am happy I got over that hurdle and we now have some direct contacts and hopefully by our next lecture on Tuesday we will have some responses. We think Tesla might let us film from the way they are speaking however a test drive may be difficult due to the sheer cost of a Tesla. 

Hyundai sounds like the most promising as they seemed really up for filming however they only have a hybrid but we still could use that contact to get something from them to help propel the project. All others we are hoping to get a response back but it feels unlikely. I plan to ask the lads if we can go on a tour of these dealerships on Tuesday to possibly have a face to face conversation, it may be easier.

Andrew has done some positive work on web design as well as branding for car dealerships as well as electric specific sites. It helps us know what style to aim for when designing our channel site etc.

Cailan has done some good work on finding some electric facts and he has found important info we can use to propel the ideas to reality.

I was with George as he tried to locate an interview about electric cars, We had some "yes" answers which is great but I think we need to get some questions sorted next week before we confirm in a specific interviewee. 

I am happy with how the day went, George and I got on the phone and started to make things happen and I think it's only going to get better as we have now started the ball rolling.