Comments on: Why some technologies fail, and others succeed

By: Jonathan Finley

Jonathan Finley — Sat, 06 Oct 2012 14:38:00 +0000

Good point.. EV’s are somewhat of a one trick pony and from what I see everywhere it’s huge selling point is that it’s green…. and that in itself is really open for debate…

The versatility of the combustion engine is its biggest selling point over the EV… your not going to haul logs out of the woods, pull a boat, or take road trips with your family with all the stuff in tow.

I just can’t see and EV F150 with the same capability anytime soon…

By: Jonathan Finley

Jonathan Finley — Sat, 06 Oct 2012 14:31:00 +0000

Which stands as a testimony to the versatility of the combustion engine…

By: Jonathan Finley

Jonathan Finley — Sat, 06 Oct 2012 14:28:00 +0000

You have to take into consideration the power factor, gasoline motors produce more power, you make the assumption that everything revolves around city drivers and people who just make “trips” in their vehicles to pick things up.

There are many many more uses for vehicles than just getting groceries that require a powerful, versatile engine that a combustion engine provides. Farm vehicles, Construction Vehicles, military vehicles, the list goes on and on.

By: kwhitefoot

kwhitefoot — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 18:06:00 +0000

Do you have any evidence that battery chargers were difficult to make in those days? Or are you just speculating on the basis that you can’t think of a way to do it without silicon rectifiers?
I can think of at least three ways of doing it without them and all of them would have been within the range of the technology available at the beginning of the 20th century. Just in case no one can think of any the techniques I have in mind are AC motor to DC generator, electromechanical relay, and copper oxide rectifier. A quick look through my library turned up instructions for making the first two and also a chemical rectifier. Here is a couple of pages from Everything Within published I think in 1938 showing a vibrating reed rectifier and a chemical rectifier http://t.co/JqpVYeZR, http://t.co/eGTowfsq. There is nothing in the first two was unknown in 1900 and while the third wasn’t invented until 1927 its manufacture doesn’t require any techniques that were not available 50 years earlier.

By: Mitchell Glaser

Mitchell Glaser — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 22:28:00 +0000

Solar power is extremely reliable in Los Angeles, and the expense is dropping daily. In fact, if a major effort were made to replace gasoline with solar panels, the economy of size would save money even with today’s technology. And how about saving a trillion dollars by not having to go to war over oil? And how about becoming the biggest manufacturer of solar energy products in the world? I could go on and on, the benefits are too huge to ignore.

By: Antinous / Moderator

Antinous / Moderator — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 20:48:00 +0000

I see a fair number of tiny, ancient people here (dangerously) driving monster pick-ups. Presumably it’s a psychological Ripley’s Loader compensatory effect for feeling vulnerable. They clearly would be unable to close the tailgate without help if it were to open by accident.

By: Lachlan Musicman

Lachlan Musicman — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 19:51:00 +0000

You have to ask? Both wars pivoted on oil and oil run cars, on rubber, on plastic. Electric submarines? Electric aircraft carriers? Electric fighter planes? None of these techs would have been advanced sufficiently without oil. Oil. petrol, gas are all transportable – electricity isn’t so much. So long lines of tanks…are unlikely So Poland doesn’t get invaded. Russia doesn’t get invaded or can’t defend itself, take your pick. Africa – well, no one even goes into Africa since there’s no electricity and no way to charge cars. Ok, maybe someone goes in to protect themselves from a southern Med. attack. And in Vietnam, without blanket bombing, helicopter drop ins etc – the Americans are even more out of their depth and get slaughtered.

Well, that’s what I can think of in about 5 mins of consideration. I’m sure there’s an entire second history waiting to be written. I should ask reddit..

By: SomeGuyNamedMark

SomeGuyNamedMark — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 16:53:00 +0000

Some people would call into Car Talk and say how they want a recommendation for, say, some big pickup truck. The guys would ask what they need it for and they’d say “Oh, maybe once per year.” Then after thinking about how they’d be driving a gas guzzler (plus the initial higher cost) the rest of the time for tasks a smaller vehicle could easily fill they realize it makes more sense to rent something for those once a year trips.

By: SomeGuyNamedMark

SomeGuyNamedMark — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 16:49:00 +0000

So Hitler wouldn’t have directed Army Group South to the Caucasus oil fields?

By: SomeGuyNamedMark

SomeGuyNamedMark — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 16:46:00 +0000

Don’t ignore the power of mental inertia either. It takes more mental effort to change one’s beliefs, even in the light of new facts, than most are willing to make.

By: SomeGuyNamedMark

SomeGuyNamedMark — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 16:45:00 +0000

“a ball of snakes fucking”

I think Maggie Koerth-Baker just found the subject for her next submission.

By: Ronald Pottol

Ronald Pottol — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 16:39:00 +0000

Really? Consumer Reports said there was no difference with the initial versions, and vhs had lower quality 4 and 6 hour modes, win for vhs.

MiniDisk had no digital out, as I recall, only analog (I recall some tech luminary bitching about that).

You are saying that a token passing scheme (token ring or fiberchannel etc) rather than collision detection should have won? Well, we would be bitching about it now, as with switched networks, it would be pointless overhead. And IBM had real problems with the early token ring chipsets.

By: wysinwyg

wysinwyg — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 15:18:00 +0000

Yes, but the vast majority of people want a car that can handle *all* the trips they need or want to make, not just the vast majority.

I seriously doubt that the “vast majority of people” has even seriously thought about this. But more importantly, why would the vast majority want something that makes no economic sense? Even assuming you’re right about this it just indicates that Maggie’s right that economics doesn’t determine which technologies are adopted.

By: ChickieD

ChickieD — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 13:18:00 +0000

I’ve worked in high tech for many years. It’s fascinating to see what technology becomes widely adopted and what the market ignores. I am a technical writer, so I tend to straddle that divide between the techies and the marketing people. There is a real lack of trust of marketing by the engineers and software developers. Many companies just allow the engineers and developers to make all the marketing decisions to avoid the conflict. The larger and more developed ones recognize the need for these people to work together and try to force some kind of cooperation into the process. One company I worked at had a weekly engineering team meeting, and every now and then the sales people would come in and tell us about what was going on in sales. It was hilarious to watch – these people spoke a completely different language and the techies just sat and scratched their heads trying to understand what the heck the sales folk were talking about. Then they ignored them. At another company, there was a lead engineer and a lead marketing project director for each new project. Again, these people worked together like oil and water. The marketing people were inevitably these loud ladies in bright red suits who hadn’t a clue how the technology worked but were interested in making catchy jingles – I remember sitting in on one meeting where the lead marketing director was explaining a product I was working on and she didn’t understand even the most basic features of the product. The engineers (almost all men) were so knee deep in protocols and signal processing they thought the marketing people were like annoying flies. Apple’s true success lies in the fact that they do seem more than anyone else to incorporate marketing into the product design process. But most high tech companies will let engineering run the show because the top executives value the technology above its usefulness or usability, and these tech people will cram a million features into a product until it become so overwhelming to use that people pass it over for the products that they find easier to attempt to understand.

By: wizardru

wizardru — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 12:47:00 +0000

You seem to assume our power grid could easily absorb a sudden massive upswing in demand for electricity. Where do you think that power is going to come from? Solar power is expensive to implement and neither it nor wind power are consistently reliable. In some locations it is in ample supply at certain times…but as one of my friends who works for a power company points out, delivering that energy is a difficult proposition and we can’t store it for any length of time (which is why blackouts happen).

There are real and valid reasons for why we haven’t just immediately replaced all cars with electric vehicles. Can they be overcome? I hope so. But to imply that it’s just a lack of foresight or will that prevents their adoption ignores a lot of realities, IMHO.

By: digi_owl

digi_owl — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 12:03:00 +0000

My understanding is that early gasoline was sold in oversized tin cans off the shelf. And usually the tank was located such that you could get away with just a funnel and a bit of lifting.

By: digi_owl

digi_owl — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 12:02:00 +0000

Loud, dirty, and needed to be hand cranked into action. Can’t have those dainty flowers do that now can we?

By: digi_owl

digi_owl — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 12:01:00 +0000

At that time, it is likely said service station would have dedicated staff to do the job for you, just like there used to actually be people present that would fill your tank (and make sure to collect payment, natch).

By: digi_owl

digi_owl — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 11:59:00 +0000

“Part of what makes infrastructure is its invisibility”

This may well be the most interesting part, as it can be an eye opener.

By: alexb

alexb — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 11:54:00 +0000

Except that in the past, and when I say past I mean less than 50 years ago, we took long trips with large amounts of luggage. We might have used a car, a taxi for example, but then the luggage was portered onto a train or a boat and we didn’t have to worry about it any more.
Our problem, if you like, is that we expect travel to be very cheap and when we go long distance we expect to have to find some mechanism to carry all our luggage – back packs, suitcases etc. We’re not prepared to pay the cost of perters to move our luggage for us and we don’t want to pay excess baggage fares at airports.
So the end result is that you buy a car big enough for the largest amount of luggage you are likely to need to carry just once or twice a year.
In reality, most families could get by with a tiny car, just big enough to get them around the local neighbourhood and in reality, they could do that just as well by bike for 9 months of the year. So why do we own cars at all?

By: Girard

Girard — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 11:16:00 +0000

Or if people desperately want to own their own cars, “filling stations” where you swap out a depleted battery for a full one (and your fee is based on the disparity in charge between the two batteries)?

By: Amelia_G

Amelia_G — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 07:08:00 +0000

Perhaps a sharing scheme that would pick up and drop off electric vehicles at stands around town much like city bicycles are in Europe? I met a mathematician from Braunschweig (or Göttingen? forgetting is my superpower) on a train who said she was working on optimizing the math for making sure those parking stands for rental bikes are neither too full nor too empty.

By: Amelia_G

Amelia_G — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 07:05:00 +0000

Because running out of oil wouldn’t have been a problem for some countries?

By: retepslluerb

retepslluerb — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 06:08:00 +0000

The failure of an American company totally explains why electric cars didn’t succeed elsewhere. I’m convinced.

In all seriousness: I bet it was the ease of fuel transportation and energy densitiy that was the reason.

Gasoline can be transported in cans and needs a pump, it at all. Most of the industrialized countries were not on the electric grid, except for the cities. And yes, even though people make only short trips most of the time, a car was a serious investment – it *had* to be able to go places.

Last, not least: Electrics are more silent and don’t smell as bad, but I bet the difference isn’t that big in husting cities where there are still shoed horses pulling carriages and which are getting warmed by burning coal. Lots and lots of coal.

By: retepslluerb

retepslluerb — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 05:57:00 +0000

Why?

By: CognitiveDissident

CognitiveDissident — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 05:49:00 +0000

One of the early EV pioneers had the idea of removable batteries that you exchange at service stations (I read about it in Edwin Black’s book Internal Combustion) So, instead of waiting for a charge, you slide out the low ones, and slide in the charged ones. It might sound cumbersome, but who knows. It’s not hard to visualize a system that would quickly accomplish that task, probably faster than a fill-up.

By: Alana Suskin

Alana Suskin — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 01:16:00 +0000

Actually, one of the main reasons that electric cars didn’t catch on is because they were marketed to women, before cars got to be a guy thing – then gas cars (loud and dirty) were marketed to men – and the rest is, unfortunately, history.

By: ocker3

ocker3 — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 23:27:00 +0000

The inability of BetaMax to carry a standard full movie didn’t hurt its chances?

By: ocker3

ocker3 — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 23:26:00 +0000

There’s more than one place you can get a car you can use for long trips you only make infrequently

By: gibbon1

gibbon1 — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 22:35:00 +0000

Offhand comment, two of my Great grand fathers bought Model T’s one in Georgia and the other down the central coast of California. An electric car wouldn’t have made any sense because they didn’t have electricity.