"Success is 90% failure" -- Soichiro Honda Electric car battery company hits road bumps - CBS News Is A123 Electric Battery A Waste of $263 Million in Government Funds? - Forbes
Seriously, do a poll on the future? Why ask 100 people if they would buy an EV? It is commonly accepted that the ones wanting new stuff are a minority. The majority either doesn't want to risk money on a new horse, or doesn't have money at all, or cannot be bothered with anything new. As Henry Ford put it:
This article was barely researched. A123 batteries aren't just used in the Karma. They're also used in VIA Trucks, for example, which I think could become quite a "big thing". Also in my experience market research is completely useless for new product categories. The average person - even a sophisticated consumer - doesn't seem to have the imagination to see how they might use a product they've never seen before.
As you know Daniel, hardly any motor vehicle these days doesn't have a great deal of electronics in it. We already have millions of electronic vehicles. Of course, that just emphasizes the ignorance of some reporters, assuming that statement came from a reporter.
Precisely my point. You can't really trust a reporter who gets such fundamental things wrong. Many years ago, a local newspaper had a brief item about something I had done. It mentioned my age in passing. Several years later, there was another brief item about me, and they gave me the same age. The reporter had looked up the previous item and neglected to account for the three years that had passed. The news media are notoriously and massively incompetent. The "news" is mostly fiction. Sometimes because a reporter or publisher wants to distort public impressions, but mostly because they are just incompetent. Science and technology reporting is probably the worst because of our abysmal science education. Most people's ideas about science and technology come from watching fantasy programs on TV. (There is no science fiction any more. It's all just fantasy now.)
Mod note: posts related to the technology adoption life-cycle and "crossing the chasm" have been moved here: Marketing the Electric Car / Crossing the Chasm
Haven't seen too much discussion about this here. Chinese giant Wanxiang wins bid for bankrupt A123 and its battery tech - GigaOm - Cleantech News and Analysis Wanxiang Takes Control Of A123. Again. As It Wins Bankruptcy Auction - InsideEVs Talk about a bad play on A123's part.
Chinese company wins bid for battery maker A123 Excite News - Chinese company wins bid for battery maker A123 Hmm.
Don't think for a moment China will sit back and let all the development happen over here in the states. Love what Apple is doing with the new iMac - to be "assembled" here in the states beginning late 2013 - though still by Foxconn... Apple has the money to subsidize this. We (USA) simply can't compete on price, which is what it eventually always boils down too. For right now, TM seems to be the only viable mass market EV producer. We need Elon to keep pushing, keep innovating, to keep it here... to sell 20,000, to make a statement that this a viable market with the right car characteristics.
This is not a good development, IMO: Johnson Controls would have been a much better fit for the automotive application, at least; it distresses me to see (as @SCW_Greg noted) US-developed technology bought for cheap on the auction block for commercialization abroad. This episode points to an interesting difference in how R&D is done this days, compared to 50 or 100 years ago. Instead of industrial giants fostering R&D funded by profits, the entrepreneurs are off in little start-ups. Remember Bell Labs?
Outsubsidized by China! "Free" market is a political myth. We'll regret this if it is allowed to go through.
I am a lowly ground pounder ... no connections whatsoever. Anyone here on the forum have any friends in places that can stop this on the basis of potential military information leaking outside the "friendly axis"? Seems like it is our only shot. I mean, batteries are batteries ... but our country has created a vehicle that is moving our country forward. I would cry if I thought it would help. I agree ... let's not lose this.