AnxietyRanger
Well-Known Member
This approach is wise, if you're talking about an change/improvement to technology. But when a disruptive change occurs, it ultimately results in business failure.
When transistors were first introduced, they sucked but had potential. Some tube companies ignored the new technology; others started their own transistor divisions. But when push came to shove, it made much more sense to invest in the existing, proven technology and markets. None of these companies were successful with the new technology. The end result - every single tube company failed, and the electronics market was taken over by new companies who specialized in transistors. The transistors eventually surpassed the performance and reliability of the tube technology - at a much cheaper price - so the transition was inevitable. This sort of thing has repeated over and over in many different markets. Car companies risk going the same route as EV technology moves forward.
I agree. I was not making a commentary on the wiseness of their "balancing act", merely that I don't think their disparaging comments on EVs are necessarily due to ignorance, it is probably often just a part of that balancing act and PR talk to the benefit of their current products. One can disagree with their decision to try and balance their old and new needs, but that doesn't always mean they are doing it out of ignorace or lack of appreciation towards EVs, they may be doing the balancing act simply because they feel they must or have, in their own calculations, come to the conclusion it is in the best business solution for them.
Not embracing disruptive change, of course, has been the undoing of multiple technology companies (or perhaps not always the undoing of entire companies, but entire businesses at least). Your tube example is a good one. More recently smartphones are another. However, the technology landscape is also littered with companies that have bet everything on a disruptive technology - only to find out the disruption never happened. Or that they embraced the disruption a generation or two too soon and some other company reaps the benefits while they reap Chapter 11. Virtual reality is an area where the 1990s are littered with corpses, let's see if 2010s change that. One might say the same of the electric car in times prior to Tesla's. Tesla, too, is standing on the shoulders of prior EV failures.
Now, it may be - and certainly we all hope - Tesla will be the one to make the EV disruption happen. I think we can say, to an extent, they are already well on that way. But if, say, fuel cells suddenly make it big, it also could be that Tesla was embracing the wrong disruption and the likes on Mercedes and Honda get there first.
Unhinging the power production from the power user is certainly a commendable approach, because it allows separate development and improvement of energy creation and energy consumption, which, at the end of the day, are very separate arts. As things stand, a BEV is, I believe, the only alternative fuel vehicle technology currently going anywhere that accomplishes this separation.
For that alone (and for all the things I list in my signature), I certainly wish Tesla succeeds and the likes of Porsche and other old-auto are decimated for slowing down this progress to protect archaic business interests.
Some say the competition doesn't need to die for Tesla to succeed, and I agree, but it sure would be nice... karma. In the end, Steve Jobs' comment about Apple vs. Microsoft needing to be forgotten wasn't about not decimating a competitor (he quantified in other interviews), it was about not getting stuck on past battles and past technologies, but embracing new disruptions. Apple did this by entering new disruptive markets (iPod, iTunes, iPhone, iPad) where Microsoft wasn't even a thing and going big there.
Tesla is not in the market where Porsche is at all, ICE based cars. Tesla is disrupting things in a completely new market.