Disrupting the disrupters — Tesla faces the challenge of the mini-fluorescent

[Tennis]

One of the bulbs in a pair of matching lights died last week and we were trying find a replacement.

It was one of those coiled mini-fluorescents, and all the spares in the assorted-light-bulb box were too long and protruded from the fixture.

But a trip to the local grocery store offered a surprise. Despite a wall of shelves our bulb was not there. In fact, as far as we could see there were no compact fluorescents available at all.
Bright idea

The occurrence offered a reminder about disruptive technology that electric car maker Telsa must heed — that any disruptive bright idea is itself subject to disruption.

Having only recently sent the the traditional energy-sucking incandescent bulb to the museum beside the coal oil lamp and buggy whip, the coiled fluorescent is on the way to the museum itself.

The compact fluorescent bulb is a bright idea that will soon join coal oil lamps on the museum shelf.

The Tesla case is not a perfect parallel, but the rise and likely fall of the mercury-laden coiled fluorescent bulb is one more reminder that being the disrupter of an entire century-old technology is no guarantee of an endless meal ticket.

"Most people when they think of fluorescents, they think of CFLs, compact fluorescents, which are the curly light bulb and generally those ones are used in your home," says Jo-Anne St. Godard, who is leading a campaign to get fluorescent bulbs recycled safely.

For St. Godard, executive director of the Recycling Council of Ontario, the main problem is mercury, an essential component in all fluorescent lights, including those long tubes commonly used in offices and public buildings.
Tons of toxic mercury

Commercial users are learning how to dispose of the tubes properly but homeowners are still tossing compact fluorescents into the trash, leading to tons of toxic mercury being released into the environment. The campaign to solve the problem has been backed by Nova Scotia MP Darren Fisher.

In the long term, the problem will be solved by the international Minamata Convention, though St. Godard says even after the CFL bulbs are banned the mercury problem will continue for decades as homeowners dispose of bulbs when they burn out.
NOBEL-PRIZE/PHYSICS

Shuji Nakamura won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2014 for helping to develop the LED bulb in 2014. The invention is pushing compact fluorescents off store shelves. (Lucy Nicholson/Reuters)

But the shelves of the nearby grocery store — part of the Loblaw chain — show that commercial and technological change does not always wait for regulation.

"In late 2016 we began reducing the amount of compact fluorescent bulbs we sell in all our stores, in favour of light-emitting diode bulbs, which are more energy efficient and safer to recycle," emailed Loblaw in response to my inquiry. "Customers have responded well to this change and we plan to stop restocking CFL bulbs on our shelves by the end of the year."
Premium price

When Tesla boss Elon Musk began marketing his cars a few years ago, like the first CFL producers, he was able to charge a premium.

A sleek all-electric vehicle that went for hundreds of kilometres on a single charge was a status symbol for the few who could afford one.

Like the makers of CFL bulbs, Musk and Tesla really did disrupt the established automobile industry.

Auto giant General Motors had tried and failed to establish a popular electric car with its EV1. Similarly General Electric created a CFL bulb in 1976, but found it too expensive to manufacture.

Incandescent light bulbs were big for a century but are now difficult to buy. (Robert Pratta/Reuters)

It was only in 1995, when Philips began making the Philips Tornado in China, that the electricity-saving design gradually began squeezing cheaper incandescent bulbs out of the marketplace. Soon everyone was making them and prices plummeted. Now little more than two decades later the usurper is being usurped as the LED bulb begins to fall in price.

Tesla share prices took a hit last week as Volvo demonstrated the all-electric sector was not Tesla's exclusive preserve.

Now that Tesla has succeeded in disrupting the market, its business model is already being disrupted. BMW competes at the high end with its i8 sports car. GM's inexpensive all-electric Bolt challenges the Tesla with a range of nearly 400 kilometres. Everybody's doing it.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/disr...esla-1.4192692

Great article. It will be interesting to see if Tesla can stay afloat the next couple of years as all the big name car manufacturers roll out their electric vehicles.

[Endus]

All it's really saying is that being the first to disrupt the market is no guarantee of long-term replacement, because the disrupted market is now more open to competitors.

Which isn't something Tesla's afraid of. Musk publicly released their patents. Musk isn't trying to be the primary and sole provider of electric vehicles, he wants a competition-driven marketplace where his vehicles are only one of the options available.

The more important lesson of the story is that nobody is going back to incandescents. The old technology is a relic and will only be sought out by those looking for nostalgia or historical accuracy. Same will be true of internal combustion engines, in time, and certainly as the sole drive source for the vehicle (until we get powerful enough batteries or some other clean power source, like fuel cells, to work as well, internal combustion in a hybrid is a workable solution).

[Independent voter]

Tenisace don't like the Elon Musk.

[Masark]

Which isn't something Tesla's afraid of. Musk publicly released their patents. Musk isn't trying to be the primary and sole provider of electric vehicles, he wants a competition-driven marketplace where his vehicles are only one of the options available.

Furthermore, they's working on cornering the market upstream, specifically on batteries.

Just Gigafactory 1 in Nevada is going to make up about 25% of the worldwide li-ion production capacity when it gets fully spun up. And they're planning on building 2 or 3 more such factories.

So they'll still be making money even if GM et al out-compete them in the automotive market, as they'll end up buying the batteries from Tesla.

[Yvaelle]

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/disr...esla-1.4192692

Great article. It will be interesting to see if Tesla can stay afloat the next couple of years as all the big name car manufacturers roll out their electric vehicles.

I don't think the article author, or you, understand what Musk is trying to do with Tesla Motors. His intent is not to build a monopoly around electric vehicles. His intent was to convert the masses and the industry to using electric vehicles - which includes using the electric vehicles of other existing auto manufacturers.

By Tesla's operating objectives, if Volvo succeeds in selling a ton of electric vehicles - Tesla succeeds in its objective. The same is true for GM, Mercedes, Tata, Nissan - anyone who enters the electric market.

Don't believe me? Tesla created most of the major innovations which make this new generation of electric vehicles possible: then they patented those innovations. Then they released those patents into the public domain. If you aren't familiar with how intellectual property work - let me explain why that's significant. If Tesla held onto those patents, they could be the exclusive leader in electric vehicle design for 20+ years - if anyone tried to compete - Tesla could sue them into the ground for violating their intellectual property. By first patenting them, then releasing those patents - Tesla achieved the opposite - they ensured no car company could do that to any other: and they gave them all the building blocks to leapfrog their electric vehicle programs to catch up with Tesla.

That would be like Apple dumping tens of billions into designing the iPhone 8, then just posting a YouTube video on how you can build your own identical iPhone 8, out of paper mache, gorilla glue, and colorful pipecleaners: and they want you to do it.

The article ends with "Everybody's doing it".

10 years ago, if you said that in regards to the electric vehicle market - that would be interpretted as, "Everybody's throwing rotten tomatoes at Tesla, and doing everything in their power to ensure electric vehicles never become a thing". Now, "Everybody's doing it" means, "Everybody's making electric vehicles": everybody's doing exactly what Elon wants them to do.

[Zmaniac17]

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/disr...esla-1.4192692

Great article. It will be interesting to see if Tesla can stay afloat the next couple of years as all the big name car manufacturers roll out their electric vehicles.

Interesting article. I would hesitate to define Tesla as a car company though. I think of Tesla as a battery company that had to start making cars to sell their batteries. To understand this it helps to look at how most large car companies operate. They rely on suppliers and only do the assembly themselves. Even if Tesla fails to become a big car brand they can insert themselves into the supply chain for the larger companies who will desperately need suppliers. Batteries will be selling like hotcakes. There is to much incoming demand and not enough production. The genius of Tesla is that they realized this so soon and managed to build a company before the demand curve peaked and was filled by established companies. They have a good chance here.



In addition to this Tesla has the added advantage of such innovative leadership which will work to keep them on the cutting edge even with risky new technologies. And on top of that their investors are patient. The push for profits has taken a backseat to innovation thus far as investors dump billions into Tesla's pockets in the hopes of seeing a Elon Musks collective dream take flight figuratively and somewhat literally. This is not a luxury that most established businesses enjoy.

[Zmaniac17]

Would make sense too, but isn't what happened. Tesla was brought into being with the intent to build electric cars and nothing else at first. They're actually not even that young anymore. Their learing and design process led to the solution that using off the shelf lithium cells provided a couple of benefits, both monetary and technically, other systems weren't able to. So far, they have been buying ALL their cells from other companies, with Panasonic being a huge supplier.
What they then realized was: If the electric car market really took off and they could make and sell the number of cars the market seemed to demand, and maybe their basic concepts were even used by other brands, then the world's current supply of lithium cells would be at least an order of magnitude too little. THIS then led to the necessity to make their own ones, and make a LOT of them as well. That branch is comparably new to the company, and they actually only are just beginning with actual manufacturing.
But since they do now have their own cell production, Musk broadened the product spectrum to another battery heavy sector: Evergy storage for domestic solar panels and backup-accumulators for entire countries' electrical nets. But this only ever became a thing AFTER the demand for batteries from cars required making them in the first place. The car was always first, and will be what defines their public image for a few years at least.

The way Musk ticks is well shown by the salary he paid himself as Tesla CEO: Minimum wage, just to alleviate some potential legal hurdles with if he did it for free. Sure, he is more than rich enough to pull this off, he doesn't need one more dollar to be able to afford anything many times over, but most other people in this position would most definitely be happy to rake in the $$$ with a fleet of excavators. Musk just doesn't care anymore. He just wants to build cool stuff and advance humanity, without any underlying malicious intent or even the goal of making money. The man is a chance mankind will likely never get again in the near (or even mid) future.

That's just how I think of them as a company. The car is a Trojan horse for the battery. They have stiff competition in the car market, but the battery market is wide open.

[Deleted]

All it's really saying is that being the first to disrupt the market is no guarantee of long-term replacement, because the disrupted market is now more open to competitors.

Which isn't something Tesla's afraid of. Musk publicly released their patents. Musk isn't trying to be the primary and sole provider of electric vehicles, he wants a competition-driven marketplace where his vehicles are only one of the options available.

The more important lesson of the story is that nobody is going back to incandescents. The old technology is a relic and will only be sought out by those looking for nostalgia or historical accuracy. Same will be true of internal combustion engines, in time, and certainly as the sole drive source for the vehicle (until we get powerful enough batteries or some other clean power source, like fuel cells, to work as well, internal combustion in a hybrid is a workable solution).

Musk does that to avoid Monopoly Laws, just like Phillips with most Memory storage technology.

[Evil Midnight Bomber]

Should have just gone to amazon

https://www.amazon.com/Compact-Fluor...node=328863011

[melodramocracy]

Most people when they think of fluorescents, they think of CFLs, compact fluorescents,

Not really. Not sure what else I'd expect from an article that flaunts the incredibly fucking annoying 'disrupt' catchphrase.

[Zmaniac17]

Question: Do you two think of Musk as an actually "evil" person, that does what he does with the clear and only goal of just making even more money in the long run in mind?

I think it's pretty clear what Musk wants to do. He's all over Youtube stating his goals. But while Musk has a say in how the company is run, Tesla is 64% owned by financial institutions. A lot of companies have idealistic roots, but it's a publicly traded company. It will do what all publicly traded companies do. It will make as much money as it possibly can.

If you think in terms of good and evil you're telling yourself fairy tales.