coming back at you from Lagos again. This trip is going pretty well, I am here with my colleague, Doug, and having company alone is far superior to being here on your own. Not only that, the company I am working for seems to actually be serious about getting the project done - something far more satisfying than just cooling ones heels for a month, which has happened in the past.
OK, so, onto our theme of the day, such as it is. A good film was made not that long ago called Who Killed the Electric Car - the answer was GM and the oil industry but GM is about to reintroduce the electric car, reluctantly and with limited enthusiasm, but they are going to do it. Here is an article from MSNBC on the subject. Notice the very mixed message!
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31146562//
A couple of points that Lutz and his colleagues make which are of note and, I think, fundamentally incorrect:
- The people who buy a Prius or, in my case (shortly), the Camary or Hilander Hybrid are early adopters, basically people who buy it either enjoy the technology or to make a statement. Now technology is adopted in some distinct phases, there are technology enthusiasts - such as me who will buy something shortly after introduction. The curve shown below is common used for high technology market planning, but sadly, not in the automotive industry.
- While gas prices are not in itself enough to justify the cost of this car, they will go up.
- They have capitulated the high ground to Toyota which now has nearly eight years with the Prius drive train. They are introducing a technology which is far earlier in the curve than Toyota and as such, while car buyers hit the Early Majority part of the curve, the Volt will be targeting the innovators part of the curve, effectively relinquishing the high ground to Toyota and never really able to catch up as Toyota will likely next upgrade their system to support a plug in Hybrid technology
OK, so onto personal technology adoption. You know, someone I once new well made two predictions to me as recently as 2003. One was that GM would dominate the advanced technology vehicle space withing five years, the other was that Apple would rapidly lose dominance of the personal entertainment device space. Well, a visionary this guy clearly was not - he had some other issues as well but that is another story. To emphasize the fact, I recently purchased my seventh (7th!) iPod, this one a 32 GByte touch. I have owned a 30 GByte Video iPod, an 80GByte version of the same, a newer 120GByte iPod Video Classic, two iPod Shuffles (a 1 GByte and 2 GByte), one 8 GByte iPod Nano and now the touch. Further I have moved all of my music onto iTunes supported by a great piece of software called TuneUP, I have four iPod docking stations and my new Camary Hybrid (coming to the blog and my life in December) will have an iPod docking port. This is technology that I just adore. It is easy and fun to use, self sorting, takes almost no space, is inexpensive, convenient (just trying buying one song on a CD!) and has revolutionized media. Just this week, iTunes Canada joined iTunes in the US with now a much enhanced and broadened iTunes TV catalog which included some of the TV shows I watched. I was able to download in HD, Heros Season 3, Battlestar Galactica Season 4 and 24 Season 7. The HD download included regular non-HD versions which I can install on either of my video iPods (the classic or the Touch). Wow! They just offered alternatives to purchasing DVDs as well as reduced my dependence on my PVR. If they follow the US model, they will offer these shows as they are released on television.
Further to all this, you can rent movies on iTunes as well - please, don't even think about investing in a video store these days! Looking at our curve above, iTunes and its electronic brethren (hereafter referred to as "the 7 dwarfs"), the whole online electronic media space in North America and Europe is now likely well into the Early Majority Phase.
Oh, well, sometimes it isn't bad to be in the majority!!!
Blog you again soon!
Paul
