However, an analysis of past technological shifts indicates that, once a certain threshold is reached, the transition could take place at surprising speed. Back in the 1980s, when cellphones were massive and expensive, industry observers were predicting that, by 2000, sales might be about 900,000 units a year. In fact, sales that year were over 109 million. Seventeen years later, almost all the phones being sold are smartphones, with capabilities that would have seemed like the stuff of science fiction only a couple of decades earlier.
Kodak was one the world’s largest companies when it invented the digital camera in 1975. But, whether due to short-sightedness or the inescapable destiny of The Innovator’s Dilemma, it failed to capitalize on its new technology, and in 2012 it went belly up.
When it comes to electric cars, experts have been saying for years that they would quickly begin to replace legacy vehicles once you could buy one with 200 miles of range for a price in the $30,000 range. Tesla has just reached that milestone with the new Model 3. Will 2017 be remembered as the auto industry’s “Kodak moment?”
Of course, cars are neither phones nor cameras. In a new paper, researchers from the International Monetary Fund and Georgetown University (via National Geographic) explore what might be a more apt comparison: the transition from horses and buggies to automobiles, which happened in the early 1900s. The writers of Riding the Energy Transition predict that over 90% of passenger vehicles in the US, Europe, and the rest of the rich world could be electric by 2040.
Read more at The EV Transition Could Mirror the Horse to Model T Transition
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