Matt Asay writes a wicked analysis of why Tesla, Amazon and Apple work so dang well and have become such powerful forces in our society. Matt posits that it’s their common commitment to jump into the future whole-hog – no holding back – and he makes a great case for his opinion.
I noted that the automobile industry had been working on electric vehicles for years, but that’s not quite true. What the industry kept foisting on us were half-baked compromises—you know, hybrid cars that looked like hamsters (Toyota Prius) and felt like they were powered by them, too.
Tesla, however, is different. As Vance writes:
With Tesla Motors, Musk has tried to revamp the way cars are manufactured and sold, while building out a worldwide fuel distribution network at the same time. Instead of hybrids, which in Musk lingo are suboptimal compromises, Tesla strives to make all-electric cars that people lust after and that push the limits of technology.
I remember the first time I test drove a Model S. It didn’t feel like a compromise. It felt like the coolest driving experience I’ve ever had, and I’ve wanted to buy one ever since.Musk and his Tesla team could have come out with the world’s greatest hybrid, but that would have also been the world’s greatest compromise. He’s inventing the future, not making a comfortable causeway to the past. That’s why he’s winning.