Comment by sebastos

To each their own and all that, but this method of driving adoption never works. Virtually nobody makes decisions that way when they're shopping for a product that is important to their everyday life.

This was Tesla's big insight in the car market. Pre-Tesla electric cars were all ugly, terrible vehicles that apologized for their own existence. They wanted to sell themselves based on the fact that they were good for the environment, while never compromising those ideals to make them, you know, actually nice to drive. But that was never going to catch on, because very few people are so idealistic that they will suffer an annoyingly bad product in exchange for virtue. People will do that all the time with little stuff, but not with big ticket items that they use a lot. So the designers of early electric cars ironically cemented their negligible impact on the environment by refusing to compromise their ideals, because the cars never became popular.

Tesla came along and realized that what they had to do was make electric cars something you _wanted_ to drive. Because they were luxurious, and fast, and sexy looking. The fact that they were virtuous was just gravy.

So if your statement is a good summary of their strategy, then they've got it backwards. You never win adopters by making crappy things that support a good cause. You win adopters by making things that do their job well, and support a good cause as a bonus. And presumably even idealists want adopters, so they should revisit that :)