"And you know, there’s sort of a bubbling underlying resentment among many working-class voters in general about ‘What if I don’t want an EV?’ You know, you know, I like my car, you know, and the idea that we’re going to have this super rapid transition to electric vehicles, I think flies in the face of the reality of consumer behavior."
When a technological revolution takes place, that "underlying resentment" is not inevitable. A lot depends on how inherently attractive the new technology is, and to a greater or lesser extent, on how well it's marketed. The next time Ruy Teixeira travels through O'Hare, or any other airport thirty years old or more, rather than rush through the baggage claim area as we all do, I invite him to take a few minutes and look around, at that strange area of empty structures between the baggage carousels and the street. That, twenty years ago, is where banks and banks of pay phones used to be. Those missing pay phones are the avatars for several whole industries, with supply chains and support networks, that disappeared in just a few years. Who misses pay phones today? How many people even miss landlines? The same technology, the miniaturized computer that we all have in our pockets, yet continue to refer to as just a "phone", simultaneously destroyed virtually the whole photographic film manufacturing and processing industry, and the camera industry, and who but a relatively small number of hobbyists regrets that?
The lesson of the cellphone is that "consumer behavior" can be a lot more flexible than it's given credit for, if the consumer is presented with a really attractive value proposition. Assuming bitter resistance shows a lack of imagination, and could become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
"And you know, there’s sort of a bubbling underlying resentment among many working-class voters in general about ‘What if I don’t want an EV?’ You know, you know, I like my car, you know, and the idea that we’re going to have this super rapid transition to electric vehicles, I think flies in the face of the reality of consumer behavior."
When a technological revolution takes place, that "underlying resentment" is not inevitable. A lot depends on how inherently attractive the new technology is, and to a greater or lesser extent, on how well it's marketed. The next time Ruy Teixeira travels through O'Hare, or any other airport thirty years old or more, rather than rush through the baggage claim area as we all do, I invite him to take a few minutes and look around, at that strange area of empty structures between the baggage carousels and the street. That, twenty years ago, is where banks and banks of pay phones used to be. Those missing pay phones are the avatars for several whole industries, with supply chains and support networks, that disappeared in just a few years. Who misses pay phones today? How many people even miss landlines? The same technology, the miniaturized computer that we all have in our pockets, yet continue to refer to as just a "phone", simultaneously destroyed virtually the whole photographic film manufacturing and processing industry, and the camera industry, and who but a relatively small number of hobbyists regrets that?
The lesson of the cellphone is that "consumer behavior" can be a lot more flexible than it's given credit for, if the consumer is presented with a really attractive value proposition. Assuming bitter resistance shows a lack of imagination, and could become a self-fulfilling prophecy.