Wednesday, October 28, 2009

What Detroit Can Learn From Silicon Valley - WSJ.com

What Detroit Can Learn From Silicon Valley - WSJ.com: "Electric cars have become viable and will likely only become more capable in the future. Components critical to their performance -- batteries and electronic control systems -- are on a rapidly rising technology curve. These technologies are new and therefore capable of improving quickly with incremental investments. By contrast, technologies that have been around a long time, such as the internal combustion engine and the fuel and drive systems built around it, have enjoyed the benefits of decades of development and have limited potential for further improvement.

The result is that there are several factors aligning to bring about a change in the structure of the automobile industry. Electric cars may match the needs of our time better and become more desirable than cars relying on the internal combustion engine. The car industry today is as vertical as the computer industry was before the PC. However, the simplicity of the electric car combined with the standardization of certain components may cause the automobile industry to shift to a horizontal structure. The Internet is already emerging as a key marketing medium for automobiles and is easily adaptable to a horizontal structure."

No comments: