4 ms·

Articles like this misunderstand both innovation and capitalism. Progress isn't typically made by some unusually smart person or enterprise gazing into the futu

by tharne 5y ago

Articles like this misunderstand both innovation and capitalism. Progress isn't typically made by some unusually smart person or enterprise gazing into the future and creating the perfect thing. It happens by lots of individuals and companies making bets and guesses, most of which are wrong, but some turn out the be right. That way the overall system can be brilliant regardless of whether or not the individual actors are brilliant. Or, more precisely, you can have a brilliant system without brilliant actors. Articles like this one look back with the benefit of hindsight and are written from the perspective, "Company X missed obvious trend Y and now they're in trouble". In reality, a bunch of companies made guesses about what could work in an unknown and uncertain future and some turned out to be right and others turned out to be wrong.

dahfizz 5y ago
The point of the article isn't "Toyota bet wrong on BEVs, haha they are dumb". The point is "Toyota bet wrong on BEVs, and are now lobbying the government to hinder electric vehicles instead of getting on board".
- delusional 5y ago
  Or more cynically: "Toyota bet wrong on BEV's, so now they're trying to flip the table before it becomes obvious that they lost". The system that's supposedly smarter than the actors are under attack by those same actors because they didn't win.
emadabdulrahim 5y ago
Why wouldn't companies pay the price for being wrong for far too long? Why don't they suck it up and let the government make decisions that would ease the transition to the future of EV?
- rantwasp 5y ago
  what does “being wrong” even mean. Everyone has an opinion and everyone has their own interests (including people in the gov). Assuming they are “wrong”, why would they suck it up? Why would anyone do something that goes directly against their self-interest?
  - postingawayonhn 5y ago
    > what does “being wrong” even mean. Developing products that are uncompetitive in the market.
    - rantwasp 5y ago
      are the products not competitive? last time I bought a car it was a Toyota. My next car will probably be a Toyota - probably a hybrid. As much as we like to pretend that the EV are the future and are happening right now, IMHO we’re not there quite yet.
modeless 5y ago
Hydrogen for cars was an obvious boondoggle for a decade or more. There's making guesses and then there's ignoring obvious trends. Toyota did the latter. Edit: And to prove that I thought it was obvious a decade ago, here's my opinion from a decade ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3070004 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3070004
- XorNot 5y ago
  I'm not sold that this has been established yet: technology moves in mysterious ways. For example EVs don't have an answer to long distance transportation yet (it should be trains, that are easily automated, but I'm not god emperor). You could imagine a future where greening that industry necessitates a storable, pumpable fuel and suddenly hydrogen infrastructure is a thing that personal vehicles could be built against.
  - modeless 5y ago
    EV range will continue to increase and so will charging speeds and number of stations. Cybertruck and Tesla Semi may have 600+ miles of range. Combined with faster charging, human fatigue will start to become the bigger limiting factor. Driving more than 12 hours per day is a very niche activity. Even truckers are forbidden from doing that by law.
  - WorldMaker 5y ago
    Even in the cases where it absolutely makes sense to distance/time shift some of the grid's output to hydrogen to ship it physically somewhere (such as a festival in the woods, perhaps, that today would rely on diesel generators for power), it's still going to be way more efficient to use a bank of larger than would fit in a car fuel cells in a shipping container creating a "mini-grid" of electricity that things like battery electric cars and other appliances could plug into than to have cars carry around fuel cells "just in case" of events like that.
- bluGill 5y ago
  To engineers it was, but to politics things are more complex. If the politics of the world demand hydrogen it doesn't matter how stupid the idea is you have to do it. Politics can shut your company down completely overnight, bad engineering can do it, but only after decades of bad decisions. Politically the powers were pushing hydrogen not long ago and nobody should be surprised if they do again.
MattRix 5y ago
Is this always true? The iPhone seems like a pretty clear argument to the contrary. As far as cars go, Tesla is a clear outlier pushing innovation. I mean sure you can argue that eventually the rest of the field will catch up, but there are many advantages to being a first mover.
- bluGill 5y ago
  There were smart phones before the iphone. They were badly done giving Apple opportunity to make them useful. (and the first iPhone was bad in a lot of ways that we only know from hindsight)
  - MattRix 5y ago
    The parent post stated “you can have a brilliant system without brilliant actors”. I don’t believe that’s true. There are many examples of brilliant stand-out products that make a huge difference in their field, and the iPhone is one of the most obvious. Also there was very little bad about the original iPhone. It obviously lacked features compred to modern phones, but it was a fantastic device.

by tharne 5y ago

dahfizz 5y ago

The point of the article isn't "Toyota bet wrong on BEVs, haha they are dumb". The point is "Toyota bet wrong on BEVs, and are now lobbying the government to hinder electric vehicles instead of getting on board".

delusional 5y ago
Or more cynically: "Toyota bet wrong on BEV's, so now they're trying to flip the table before it becomes obvious that they lost". The system that's supposedly smarter than the actors are under attack by those same actors because they didn't win.

emadabdulrahim 5y ago

Why wouldn't companies pay the price for being wrong for far too long? Why don't they suck it up and let the government make decisions that would ease the transition to the future of EV?

rantwasp 5y ago
what does “being wrong” even mean. Everyone has an opinion and everyone has their own interests (including people in the gov). Assuming they are “wrong”, why would they suck it up? Why would anyone do something that goes directly against their self-interest?
- postingawayonhn 5y ago
  > what does “being wrong” even mean. Developing products that are uncompetitive in the market.
  - rantwasp 5y ago
    are the products not competitive? last time I bought a car it was a Toyota. My next car will probably be a Toyota - probably a hybrid. As much as we like to pretend that the EV are the future and are happening right now, IMHO we’re not there quite yet.

modeless 5y ago

Hydrogen for cars was an obvious boondoggle for a decade or more. There's making guesses and then there's ignoring obvious trends. Toyota did the latter. Edit: And to prove that I thought it was obvious a decade ago, here's my opinion from a decade ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3070004 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3070004

XorNot 5y ago
I'm not sold that this has been established yet: technology moves in mysterious ways. For example EVs don't have an answer to long distance transportation yet (it should be trains, that are easily automated, but I'm not god emperor). You could imagine a future where greening that industry necessitates a storable, pumpable fuel and suddenly hydrogen infrastructure is a thing that personal vehicles could be built against.
- modeless 5y ago
  EV range will continue to increase and so will charging speeds and number of stations. Cybertruck and Tesla Semi may have 600+ miles of range. Combined with faster charging, human fatigue will start to become the bigger limiting factor. Driving more than 12 hours per day is a very niche activity. Even truckers are forbidden from doing that by law.
- WorldMaker 5y ago
  Even in the cases where it absolutely makes sense to distance/time shift some of the grid's output to hydrogen to ship it physically somewhere (such as a festival in the woods, perhaps, that today would rely on diesel generators for power), it's still going to be way more efficient to use a bank of larger than would fit in a car fuel cells in a shipping container creating a "mini-grid" of electricity that things like battery electric cars and other appliances could plug into than to have cars carry around fuel cells "just in case" of events like that.
bluGill 5y ago
To engineers it was, but to politics things are more complex. If the politics of the world demand hydrogen it doesn't matter how stupid the idea is you have to do it. Politics can shut your company down completely overnight, bad engineering can do it, but only after decades of bad decisions. Politically the powers were pushing hydrogen not long ago and nobody should be surprised if they do again.

MattRix 5y ago

Is this always true? The iPhone seems like a pretty clear argument to the contrary. As far as cars go, Tesla is a clear outlier pushing innovation. I mean sure you can argue that eventually the rest of the field will catch up, but there are many advantages to being a first mover.

bluGill 5y ago
There were smart phones before the iphone. They were badly done giving Apple opportunity to make them useful. (and the first iPhone was bad in a lot of ways that we only know from hindsight)
- MattRix 5y ago
  The parent post stated “you can have a brilliant system without brilliant actors”. I don’t believe that’s true. There are many examples of brilliant stand-out products that make a huge difference in their field, and the iPhone is one of the most obvious. Also there was very little bad about the original iPhone. It obviously lacked features compred to modern phones, but it was a fantastic device.