I think the differentiator vs. Tesla is that Theranos promised things that are/were physically impossible. Putting aside Tesla's long history of delays, I think

I think the differentiator vs. Tesla is that Theranos promised things that are/were physically impossible. Putting aside Tesla's long history of delays, I think it's fair to say that the company has delivered on some of its core technological promises. Battery pack cost per kWh is close to dipping below $100, Tesla has dramatically reduced their use of rare earth metals in their packs, they've helped alleviate concerns around thermal runaway in their packs, and various academic and anecdotal accounts have shown that Tesla batterypacks hold up well even after hundreds of thousands of miles of road use and thousands of recharge cycles. These are all meaningful advancements in basic science. In the Carreyrou book, one clear example is the explanation of why Theranos couldn't possibly do "all blood tests" on a single drop of blood. On an individual test basis, finger pricked blood is different in chemical makeup from blood drawn from a vein. If you're testing for certain diseases, even assuming that you had equipment sensitive enough to find small concentrations of a target element or organism, the finger pricked blood may just not have those markers at all. Secondly, blood testing is a destructive process. If a doctor orders an immunoassay and a pathogen test for a patient, it's close to physically impossible to run both tests on Theranos's much touted "single drop of blood". You would be using up portions of an already tiny sample to perform the reactions necessary for each test. The premise that you could do multiple tests on a single drop of blood was a false one from the start. Third, the purported form factor of Theranos testing machines, a small Apple-esque box, created physics problems from the start. Proteins and cells in blood are hyper-sensitive to temperature. One of Elizabeth Holmes's subordinates literally repurposed a glue robot to perform the basic blood testing tasks that would normally be done by a human. Imagine trying to have a tiny robotic arm trying to pick up tubes of blood from a tray, and perform chemical reactions, all within a shoebox-sized machine. Trying to leave enough room for the robot to physically swing its arm, and maintaining an acceptable level of heat dissipation so as to not destroy the samples was a challenge that Theranos never solved. At a certain point, you're running up against basic laws of physics and the literal limitations of space.