EDN Article: Are EVs Running Out Of Gas?

[XURQ03A@prodigy.com ( LEE A HART)]

The Aug 19, 1999 issue of EDN magazine has an editorial entitled "Are electric
vehicles running out of gas?" by editorial director Michael Markowitz. You can
read the article at http://www.ednmag.com.

Markowitz observes that EVs are not doing well for the major auto
manufacturers. But rather than trot out the usual excuses (poor range, high
price, etc.), he brings up a couple good points I think are worth sharing.

He refers to Clayton Christensen's book "The Innovator's Dilemma" which
defines two types of innovations: sustaining and disruptive. A sustaining
innovation is an incremental improvement over what one already has. It allows
logical, step-by-step advances in the state of the art. This is the kind of
innovation that large companies need to survive and grow. Well-managed,
established companies will invest aggressively in sustaining innovations, and
try hard to make them work.

A disruptive innovation, on the other hand, forces change. It makes a company
stop what it has been doing, back up, and take a different course. The
innovation will initially be inferior in mainstream applications, so
established customers often don't understand it and don't want it. Disruptive
products are often simpler and cheaper, so they promise lower margins, not
greater profit. As a result, disruptive products find new applications in
emerging markets that are impossible to analyze.

For example, fuel injection, air bags, and antilock brakes are sustaining
innovations. Car companies adopted them because they are incremental
improvements over what was done before. Yes, the auto industry had to be
forced into it by government regulations, but in the end these innovations
were accepted and became standard.

But EVs are a disruptive innovation. They will change everything. Government
regulations can force the auto companies to try these innovations, but they
will ultimately be unsuccessful. A large well-managed company makes business
decisions to insure *against* disruptive innovations.

He suggests that GM, Honda, and other EV producers need to learn from the
past. Lots of vehicles that were successful in other world markets were dismal
flops when introduced into the US. The smart companies learned not to compete
head-on with the American automobile, but instead to find niche markets that
valued the very things that looked like disadvantages to current car buyers.

Lee Hart                     If you would not be forgotten
4209 France Ave. N.          Soon as you are dead and rotten
Robbinsdale, MN 55422 USA    Either write things worth the reading
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e-mail XURQ03A@prodigy.com   (Ben Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanac)