So... Check Mate, Internal Combustion Engine

[richkae]

Brilliant Rich.

I suggest one change since at the time, film vs pixels was all about how big you could blow an image up.



"resolution anxiety"

Thanks.
Yeah, I did it really quickly, that would be better. I posted it as a comment an hour ago but it hasn't passed moderation......

 

[richkae]

I want to beat this horse a little more.
I have purchased a lot of cameras. I purchased an expensive and fancy Canon 35mm film camera and lots of lenses and flashes ( not a professional model, but a good one ).
When digital cameras came out I tried lots of them: a Kodak DC50, DC120, DC210, then several Canon's. Now we have a fancy Canon digital SLR.
For some of those I did incremental upgrades that made little financial sense. Luckily for my habit some of those upgrades were also the result of certain family members dropping them in the ocean, or on volcanic rock, or off a moving bicycle. ( I was never mad: woo-hoo I get to upgrade! )
My point is not about how much money I wasted on the latest and greatest digital cameras as they rapidly evolved, but instead about the fancy 35mm film camera.

I could have sold the fancy 35mm film camera and recouped part of its cost for several years while digital cameras were in their infancy. Now, it has a value of zero.
It still works fine as a camera, you can still buy film. but nobody else wants it, and nobody else has wanted it for several years since digital cameras hit the mainsteam.
There was a point in time when it had value and that value quickly went to zero.

I don't think the value of a used ICE car will decrease as rapidly as a film camera did - but I bet they will be affected when EVs are available in volume.

 

[brianman]

I could have sold the fancy 35mm film camera and recouped part of its cost for several years while digital cameras were in their infancy. Now, it has a value of zero.

CRT monitors. Same story. Except CRT monitors likely have less collector value than 35mm cameras. I don't know anybody (other than museum folk) nostalgic about CRT monitors; not so with cameras.

Also CRTs have a negative value -- disposal/recycling fee.

 

[deonb]

CRT monitors. Same story. Except CRT monitors likely have less collector value than 35mm cameras. I don't know anybody (other than museum folk) nostalgic about CRT monitors; not so with cameras.

Also CRTs have a negative value -- disposal/recycling fee.

Hey, I actually bought a CRT monitor last month!

But that was just so that I could take the flyback transformer out to build one of these, which was decidedly more fun
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=caqZSYDvRSg

 

[Doug_G]

We at Kodak are going to bet our futures on chemical film. It's ISO 400 until we die."

Wow, how incredibly prophetic. That's exactly what they did - held onto chemical film and died. Nice quote!!!

 

[mknox]

...just to be clear... I don't subscribe to the position expressed in that CBC article I linked to. I just referenced it because it came out right when this thread was started and I thought it might be interesting fodder for discussion! :wink:

 

[Mayhemm]

...just to be clear... I don't subscribe to the position expressed in that CBC article I linked to. I just referenced it because it came out right when this thread was started and I thought it might be interesting fodder for discussion! :wink:

Anybody familiar with your posting history should know that's what you were doing. :smile:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Continuing on this line of discussion though, it's interesting to note that the rate of product adoption has been accelerating with each generation. VHS dominated the home video market for nearly 20 years, DVD just over 10 years. This is true of most other things as well.

The article's two main reservations about EVs; cost and range, are easily addressed. I think EVs will be a major force within 10 years, easily. Barring something unforeseen, of course, like utility rates quadrupling.

 

[Kaivball]

Automobile is 100 years it so old.

We easily have another 100 years of oil.

ICE isn't going anywhere soon.

There is room for both.

 

[TD1]

Automobile is 100 years it so old.

We easily have another 100 years of oil.

ICE isn't going anywhere soon.

There is room for both.

As soon as the EV will become viable for the whole population, Governments (European Union, China) that rely on foreign Oil will tax the **** out of petroleum to decrease their trading deficit.

 

[Mayhemm]

Automobile is 100 years it so old.

We easily have another 100 years of oil.

ICE isn't going anywhere soon.

There is room for both.

That last 100 years-worth is going to be super expensive and super dangerous (not to mention destructive to the environment; re: frakking) to retrieve. The costs of this will affect the price. People will balk at $10 or $15 per gallon for gas.

However, oil will not go away simply because it is no longer needed for cars. It's still worth billions to industrial processes.

 

[PeterW]

As soon as the EV will become viable for the whole population, Governments (European Union, China) that rely on foreign Oil will tax the **** out of petroleum to decrease their trading deficit.

I think local governments (city councils) will play a part here too. Why would you buy an ICE when you can't even drive it into the city?

 

[arg]

I don't think the value of a used ICE car will decrease as rapidly as a film camera did - but I bet they will be affected when EVs are available in volume.

It has happened before with ICEs. In the UK, when leaded fuel was phased out in 2000, cars aged over about 10 years (ie. from before unleaded compatibility became a standard feature) suddenly had negative value. We had a severe problem with unwanted cars being dumped - if you owned a piece of land and someone drove their unwanted car onto it and abandoned it, you had the problem of getting rid of it. Here is a news article from the time: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/892297.stm

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

CRT monitors. Same story. Except CRT monitors likely have less collector value than 35mm cameras. I don't know anybody (other than museum folk) nostalgic about CRT monitors; not so with cameras.

Also CRTs have a negative value -- disposal/recycling fee.

CRT monitors are a specialized item, rather like vinyl. Yes, analog does offer greater potential quality but it comes at a high price. Cheap batteries would shift ICEs to low-mileage and heavy-vehicle but still radicalky change the landscape.

 

[jeff_adams]

Stuff can shift so fast it will make your head spin. What happened to older TVs when broadcasters switched to High-Def? How about GPS sales when cell phones put GPS chips in?

Who's to say there will not end up being a severe carbon tax? That could change the game in a hurry

 

[richkae]

Automobile is 100 years it so old.

We easily have another 100 years of oil.

ICE isn't going anywhere soon.

There is room for both.

"The Stone Age didn’t end for lack of stone, and the oil age will end long before the world runs out of oil."
Sheik Ahmed Zaki Yamani

 

[brianman]

CRT monitors are a specialized item, rather like vinyl. Yes, analog does offer greater potential quality but it comes at a high price. Cheap batteries would shift ICEs to low-mileage and heavy-vehicle but still radicalky change the landscape.

Again, I think I disagree here.

Vinyl has some collector value and, to some, a practical value.

Other than enthusiast use for parts, I don't think anyone is nostalgic or sees practical value in CRTs.

I think ICE will be more like vinyl.

 

[NigelM]

There's a whole bunch of tangential businesses that are going to be affected by a long-term decline in ICEs - as demand for gasoline falls what becomes of gas stations. Oh, and Jiffy Lube franchise anyone?

 

[ggies07]

There's a whole bunch of tangential businesses that are going to be affected by a long-term decline in ICEs - as demand for gasoline falls what becomes of gas stations. Oh, and Jiffy Lube franchise anyone?

I've been thinking about this. Not sure about other businesses, but I don't see why QT (QuickTrip) can't switch out the gas pumps for charging stations. They make most of their money from the convenience store, so it seems like an easy switch.

 

[mknox]

I think it's essentially going to come down to price, and the battery is the biggest component of EV pricing right now. A lot of the other examples had drastic and rapid price drops as adoption rose. If that happens, then the ICE's days are numbered. The question is, do we see a "Moore's Law" type of scenario happening with battery technology?

 

[adric22]

I'm only 38 years old and I've seen many technologies come and go in my lifetime. Some of the more interesting ones for this conversation are:

• Digital Cameras
• LCD Monitors/Televisions
• DVD Players
• Cell Phones

I was an early adopter to all of these things. My friends and family thought I was crazy on each and every one because they believed they were doomed to failure or to remain a niche market. TO be fair, I also had a laserdisc player, which admittedly did stay a niche market until it was replaced by DVD. In most cases the argument was the same, that these items were too expensive. But the Cell Phone and DVD player did suffer from another issue which I think is analogous to the electric car. The DVD players, people said there wasn't enough content available on DVD. (I think there were like 20 some odd movies available at launch) So they blamed the lack of content on the player itself, much like people today blame the electric car for a lack of charging infrastructure. A similar situation with the Cell phone, people said the coverage area wasn't good enough because you couldn't make a call in the middle of nowhere. The second issue that I find interesting is that people said the DVD player would fail because it couldn't record. And people insisted that recording their favorite TV shows was a required feature. Much like people today say they need hundreds of miles of range so they can take roadtrips. The irony is that when DVD recorders finally made it to shelves that could essentially completely replace the old VCR by recording your favorite shows, people didn't buy them. Turns out it wasn't that important after all.

So I see a lot of parallels with these technologies. But the electric car movement has much bigger enemies than DVD players. After all, the same people who now profit from DVD are the same people that profited from VHS before. But the EV threatens to destroy auto dealerships, oil companies, quick lubes, gas stations, and entire countries that produce oil. So there are lots of enemies.