Today, the iPhone IS the Personal Computer. If that's not massive, category-changing, ecosystem-disrupting, change, then I don't know what is - especially since it reverberates across once-unrelated markets like GPS, photography, cartography, and...well, pretty much anything for which there's now an app.
Using language as proxy, this looks like the point when the smartphones began turning into the most personal of personal computers in a really big way.
"Cool," perhaps, but not even vaguely innovative. It doesn't change any business models, it doesn't bypass anything or make any real changes, it's just a big iPhone (or, really, an iPod Touch). It hasn't "changed the computing industry." It's introduced a new line of the same products we had before.
"Let's make a bigger one" was a really great idea, but it's not really in the same league.
The Model S is "Cool", perhaps, but not even vaguely innovative. It doesn't change any business models, it doesn't bypass anything or make any real changes, it's just a new kind of car that doesn't use gas (really, a big golf cart). It won't "change the automotive industry." It's introducing a new line of the same products we had before.
With the Model S you still have roads, parking, large upfront costs, a driver, and traffic. The only difference is fuel. Minor.
(I'm all for the Model S, but I think you're putting much too high a standard on "innovative".)
That's not true. Tesla is significantly disrupting the archaic dealership model. They sell their cars directly, over the internet, and from corporate-owned showrooms.
Sorry, not much of a purchaser using Apple's services. To me the store to buy hardware, the store to by music, and the store to buy apps have the same password and are from the same company, so I think of them as the same.
So what is actually considered innovative in your opinion. I don't know about you but building charging infrastructure in addition to producing top class electric cars seems like a pretty big shift to me.
Think about what happens if the car really catches on in China (somewhere that has a ton of vehicles and needs a more environmentally friendly solution).
I think you are significantly underestimating the removal of gasoline from the car equation.
Because it's rather inefficient moving two tons of stuff for (often enough) 80 kg of payload. I'd rather take well-functioning public transport than force everyone to own a car just to be able to go grocery shopping. It's wasteful, not only regarding the resources involved, but also for your own bank account.
(Also everything the parent of that comment said. Plenty of places are horrible to use without a car even where the distances involved are easily walkable or cycleable. We increasingly tend to plan for cars first, people second which I personally would consider a dead end and rather short-sighted.)
But this assumes "well-functioning public transport". In reality, this does not exist. Many, even most buses where I live are empty most of the time.
Energy efficiency issues aside, cars provide something even more valuable: isolation and privacy from the disgusting and invasive sensory overload that is public transport.
Replacing street cars with public buses is hardly eliminating public transportation. Honestly, buses have so many advantages over electric streetcars that I wouldn't be surprised if this move prevented a lot of cities from scrapping their public transportation all together. Even countries that don't share the US's unfortunate emphasis on automobile transportation don't use streetcars anymore.
The externalities (noise, pollution, horrendous city planning, ...) are carried by everyone, though. And while people may not be forced, there are certainly places where living without a car ranges from inconvenient over hard to impossible.
People use iPads all the time now in situations they previously wouldn't have used a computing device.
I know of plenty of companies that have bought one just to easily demo stuff or to be able to do stuff in the field that they wouldn't have done earlier.
The iPad came out to wide acclaim because they got it right and showed it was possible. So many nay sayers saying even 6 months after release that it wouldn't be popular, it was a tiny market. It's very easy to reinvent history but I remember the crunchpad/joojoo coming out before the iPad, and it got panned everywhere even though many of us wanted a big screen iPhone.
Let's make an electric car is on the same level of innovation as lets make a bigger iPhone. Both had already been thought of a decade before, both had already been tried before, both had already had failed entrants that made no money and it turns out they were actually both pretty large technical challenges to do it well enough that the consumers would actually buy the product.
I would say they were in exactly the same league.
And lets not forget that Apple had already single handedly created the portable computing market in the first place with the iPhone.
Compare their total market value to the post-iPhone smartphone market and try saying that again with a straight face.
And that's exactly the point I'm trying to make, perhaps badly! Before the iPhone or the iPad people knew there was a market there. But they claimed it was tiny and not worth entering or putting serious R&D into. So you ended up with hobbyist/yuppie toys.
Say tomorrow someone unveils a 3D printer that does some essential household task and every house has one in 5 years time because you'd be crazy to not have an Initech Megamaker 3000! Were Initech the the first into the market? No! But they were the ones that turned it from a hobbyist thing into a real powerhouse multi-billion $$$ market. They single handedly grew the market by orders of magnitude, they saw the actual potential market.
Whatever comparatively miniscule market there was before the iPhone is a reminder of how easy it is to think too small. Just look at the Android preview before the iPhone came out! It was utterly rubbish. Google were thinking small.
What do you mean "hasn't changed any business models"? It has thrown Microsoft for a complete loop. Microsoft has restructured their product development to combat this erosion. Windows 8, Metro, the App Store, etc. are all direct responses to the iPad shifting people away from Redmond's desktop platform.
These are plenty of business that exist solely be use of the iPad/iPhone market. Accessories and apps. And this is quite apart from those business that have been changed. I have watched a radiologist do a consult with someone using an iPad in a car park to view images. That is a change.
I would say the iPhone changed the industry. The iPad also changed the industry. A toddler might not be able to use and iPhone but they sure can use an iPad. That is a game changer not just a bigger iPhone.
If I described Tesla the way you described and iPad, I would say "another electric car with better styling".
A few reasons come to mind. Either they are planning to do something cool, though it's not public yet, or people who have the cool / life changing ideas will go off on their own to do them.
The way you keep people like Musk in companies performing is giving them a large portion of ownership of their particular endeavor, so they benefit based on how successful they are - however then they're really just becoming investors.
Apple's ability to keep Jony Ive around comes to mind. He has an incredible platform at Apple and the creative freedom to develop and release products that are used by millions all over the world. Of course given his popularity, he could probably go off on his own and still be successful, but it wouldn't be easy.
GM already had this, with the Chevy Volt (a very interesting concept in its own right). But the problem is, despite a highly sensible transition approach from gasoline to electric, it's still a CHEVY. It's built to Chevy construction standards, Chevy aesthetics.
It's built to Chevy construction standards, Chevy aesthetics.
Which vary greatly, I might add. The Corvette and Camaro are very nice cars. The HHR was a nice looking, if somewhat derivative car, and the SSR was pretty unique and a pretty cool ride in it's own right.
OTOH, you have the modern Malibu, which is an insult to the Malibu legacy, and all the other crappy/generic low-end stuff they are pushing out.
GM has really suffered from "brand confusion" the past few years. And even killing off a few brands (Oldsmobile, Saturn, Pontiac) didn't really help, because there's still little clear connection between any of the remaining brands and any specific positioning. Well, OK, I guess Cadillac is still the "luxury" brand. What what does Chevy represent? Performance cars (Corvette, Camaro), electric cars (Volt), entry level cars for first-time buyers (??? I don't even know what their model for that is these days), or something else?
This is probably going a bit off-topic, but when GM did the big brand re-org, I think they screwed the pooch. If they were going to kill what was supposed to be their "performance" brand (Pontiac), they should have repositioned Chevy into that role, and focused on the Corvette, Camaro and similar models. Saturn could have picked up all of the low-end, entry level stuff, and Buick would have made a fine home for generic mid-level sedans and family cars. Where electric cars fit into this is subject to debate, I suppose. I would think you could position one as either "luxury" and put in under the Cadillac brand, or "performance" and put it under the Chevy brand (in my re-imagined GM).
Anyway... sorry for rambling. I grew up a fan of GM products, Chevy in particular, and still own a 1968 Camaro, so I have some sentimental attachment to them. But GM management never seen to quit finding new and innovative ways to disappoint their loyal fans.
Is the Chevy standard a good or bad thing? I ask this because the cars they sell (or rebadge then sell) in New Zealand aren't really that well built compared to European and Japanese cars.
