Comment by mocmoc

1 day ago

[flagged]

I don't want to pile on you as I see you've already taken a hit - so I'll leave the voting out of this. But consider how many people you knew in the 80s/90s with a Laser Disc player. It was very niche. You likely had one techy nerd friend, or you had a friend that had a dad that was always buying "the next big thing". I think I knew ONE GUY that bought a laser disc player. Contrast that with just Tesla (not even EVs). You likely know 4 or 5 friends or family that own one. The model Y was the best selling vehicle last year. Whether that trend lasts into the 2050s, none of us can know. But calling it a failure? I just don't see it.

  • Electric cars were a failure, their market share tanked back in the 1910s. So a vague "electric cars failed in the market" is technically true. However, that past failure is quite distinct from the current electric car thing.

The technology is fine, it's the leadership. Plenty of other countries are rolling out EVs fine, we (the US) just can't seem to build out the charging infrastructure or standardize on a charging port.

(And don't forget that Laserdisk was quite successful for what it tried to do, and that when you buy physical videos today, they're in optical disk format.)

  • The U.S. already standardized on a charging port: Tesla's. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Charging_Standa...

    • There is no legal mandate for NACS.

      Cars are still sold with J1772/CCS ports, there are still CCS chargers being deployed, there are still J1772 home chargers being sold, almost every level 2 charger is J1772, and my NACS EV came with two dongles.

      (FWIW, the new Leaf has a NACS port that's only used for level 3 charging, and separate J1772 port for level 1/2 charging.)

      If there was a legal mandate for a changeover, it would be a very different story.

      ---

      We pretty much need to force NACS: Force all public chargers (level 2 and 3) to be NACS, force all cars sold to be NACS, and make it super-easy for people with older cars to get dongles.

Electric car sales keep growing and even their biggest critics agree they are better to drive than ICE cars.