by Adam Hartung | Nov 28, 2014 | Current Affairs, Innovation, Leadership, Web/Tech
Last week I gave 1,000 VHS video tapes to Goodwill Industries. These had been accumulated through 30 years of home movie watching, including tapes purchased for entertaining my 3 children.
It was startling to realize how many of these I had bought, and also surprising to learn they were basically valueless. Not because the content was outdated, because many are still popular titles. But rather because today the content someone wants can be obtained from a streaming download off Amazon or Netflix more conveniently than dealing with these tapes and a mechanical media player.
It isn’t just a shift in technology that made those tapes obsolete. Rather, a major trend has shifted. We don’t really seek to “own” things any more. We’ve become a world of “renters.”
The choice between owning and renting has long been an option. We could rent video tapes, and DVDs. But even though we often did this, most Boomers also ended up buying lots of them. Boomers wanted to own things. Owning was almost always considered better than renting.
Boomers wanted to own their cars, and often more than one. Auto renting was only for business trips. Boomers wanted to own their houses, and often more than one. Why rent a summer home, when, if you could afford it, you could own one. Rent a boat? Wouldn’t it be better to own your own boat (even if you only use it 10 times/year?)
Now we think very, very differently. I haven’t watched a movie on any hard media in several years. When I find time for video entertainment, I simply download what I want, enjoy it and never think about it again. A movie library seems – well – unnecessary.
As a Boomer, there’s all those CDs, cassette tapes (yes, I have them) and even hundreds of vinyl records I own. Yet, I haven’t listened to any of them in years. It’s far easier to simply turn on Pandora or Spotify – or listen to a channel I’ve constructed on YouTube. I really don’t know why I continue to own those old media players, or the media.
Since the big real estate meltdown many people are finding home ownership to be not as good as renting. Why take such a huge risk, paying that mortgage, if you don’t have to?
That this is a trend is even clearer generationally. Younger people really don’t see the benefit of home ownership, not when it means taking on so much additional debt. Home ownership costs are so high that it means giving up a lot of other things. And what’s the benefit? Just to say you own your home?
Where Boomers couldn’t wait to own a car, young people are far less likely. Especially in, or near, urban areas. The cost of auto ownership, including maintenance, insurance and parking, becomes really expensive. Compared with renting a ZipCar for a few hours when you really need a car, ownership seems not only expensive, but a downright hassle.
And technology has followed this trend. Once we wanted to own a PC, and on that PC we wanted to own lots of data – including movies, pictures, books – anything that could be digitized. And we wanted to own software applications to capture, view, alter and display that data. The PC was something that fit the Boomer mindset of owning your technology.
But that is rapidly becoming superfluous. With a mobile device you can keep all your data in a cloud. Data you want to access regularly, or data you want to rent. There’s no reason to keep the data on your own hard drive when you can access it 24×7 everywhere with a mobile device.
And the same is true for acting on the data. Software as a service (SaaS) apps allow you to obtain a user license for $10-$20/user, or $.99, or sometimes free. Why spend $200 (or a lot more) for an application when you can accomplish your task by simply downloading a mobile app?
So I no longer want to own a VCR player (or DVD player for that matter) to clutter up my family room. And I no longer want to fill a closet with tapes or cased DVDs. Likewise, I no longer want to carry around a PC with all my data and applications. Instead, a small, easy to use mobile device will allow me to do almost everything I want.
It is this mega trend away from owning, and toward a simpler lifestyle, that will end the once enormous PC industry. When I can do all I really want to do on my connected device – and in fact often do more things because of those hundreds of thousands of apps – why would I accept the size, weight, complexity, failure problems and costs of the PC?
And, why would I want to own something like Microsoft Office? It is a huge set of applications which contain dozens (hundreds?) of functions I never use. Wouldn’t life be much simpler, easier and cheaper if I acquire the rights to use the functionality I need, when I need it?
There was a time I couldn’t imagine living without my media players, and those DVDs, CDs, tapes and records. But today, I’m giving lots of them away – basically for recycling. While we still use PCs for many things today, it is now easy to visualize a future where I use a PC about as often as I now use my DVD player.
In that world, what happens to Microsoft? Dell? Lenovo?
The implications of this are far-reaching for not only our personal lives, and personal technology suppliers, but for corporate IT. Once IT managed mainframes. Then server farms, networks and thousands of PCs. What will a company need an IT department to do if employees use their own mobile devices, across common networks, using apps that cost a few bucks and store files on secure clouds?
If corporate technology is reduced to just operating some “core” large functions like accounting, how big – or strategic – is IT? The “T” (technology) becomes irrelevant as people focus on gathering and analyzing information. But that’s not been the historical training for IT employees.
Further, if Salesforce.com showed us that even big corporations can manage something as critical as their customer information in a SaaS environment on mobile devices, is it not possible to imagine accounting and supply chain being handled the same way? If so, what role will IT have at all?
The trend toward renting rather than owning is monumental. It affects every business. But in an ironic twist of fate, it may dramatically reduce the focus on IT that has been so critical for the Boomer generation.
by Adam Hartung | Oct 6, 2014 | Current Affairs, In the Swamp, In the Whirlpool, Leadership, Web/Tech
Hewlett Packard is splitting in two. Do you find yourself wondering why? You aren’t alone.
Hewlett Packard is nearly 75 years old. One of the original “silicone valley companies,” it started making equipment for engineers and electronic technicians long before computers were every day products. Over time HP’s addition of products like engineering calculators moved it toward more consumer products. And eventually HP became a dominant player in printers. All of these products were born out of deep skills in R&D, engineering and product development. HP had advantages because its products were highly desirable and unique, which made it nicely profitable.
But along came a CEO named Carly Fiorina, and she decided HP needed to grow much bigger, much more quickly. So she bought Compaq, which itself had bought Digital Equipment, so HP could sell Wintel PCs. PCs were a product in which HP had no advantage. PC production had always been an assembly operation of other companies’ intellectual property. It had been a very low margin, brutally difficult place to grow unless one focused on cost lowering rather than developing intellectual capital. It had nothing in common with HP’s business.
To fight this new margin battle HP replaced Ms. Fiorina with Mark Hurd, who recognized the issues in PC manufacturing and proceeded to gut R&D, product development and almost every other function in order to push HP into a lower cost structure so it could compete with Dell, Acer and other companies that had no R&D and cultures based on cost controls. This led to internal culture conflicts, much organizational angst and eventually the ousting of Mr. Hurd.
But, by that time HP was a company adrift with no clear business model to help it have a sustainably profitable future.
Now HP is 4 years into its 5 year turnaround plan under Meg Whitman’s leadership. This plan has made HP much smaller, as layoffs have dominated the implementation. It has weakened the HP brand as no important new products have been launched, and the gutted product development capability is still no closer to being re-established. And PC sales have stagnated as mobile devices have taken center stage – with HP notably weak in mobile products. The company has drifted, getting no better and showing no signs of re-developing its historical strengths.
So now HP will split into two different companies. Following the old adage “if you can’t dazzle ’em with brilliance, baffle ’em with bulls**t.” When all else fails, and you don’t know how to actually lead a company, then split it into pieces, push off the parts to others to manage and keep at least one CEO role for yourself.
Let’s not forget how this mess was created. It was a former CEO who decided to expand the company into an entirely different and lower margin business where the company had no advantage and the wrong business model. And another that destroyed long-term strengths in innovation to increase short-term margins in a generic competition. And then yet a third who could not find any solution to sustainability while pushing through successive rounds of lay-offs.
This was all value destruction created by the persons at the top. “Strategic” decisions made which, inevitably, hurt the organization more than helped it. Poorly thought through actions which have had long-term deleterious repercussions for employees, suppliers, investors and the communities in which the businesses operate.
The game of musical chairs has been very good for the CEOs who controlled the music. They were paid well, and received golden handshakes. They, and their closest reports, did just fine. But everyone else….. well…..
by Adam Hartung | Jul 28, 2014 | Current Affairs, Defend & Extend, In the Whirlpool, Web/Tech
Over the last couple of weeks big announcements from Apple, IBM and Microsoft have set the stage for what is likely to be Microsoft’s last stand to maintain any sense of personal technology leadership.
Custer Tries Holding Off An Unstoppable Native American Force
To many consumers the IBM and Apple partnership probably sounded semi-interesting. An app for airplane fuel management by commercial pilots is not something most people want. But what this announcement really amounted to was a full assault on regaining dominance in the channel of Value Added Resellers (VARs) and Value Added Dealers (VADs) that still sell computer “solutions” to thousands of businesses. Which is the last remaining historical Microsoft stronghold.
Think about all those businesses that use personal technology tools for things like retail point of purchase, inventory control, loan analysis in small banks, restaurant management, customer data collection, fluid control tracking, hotel check-in, truck routing and management, sales force management, production line control, project management — there is a never-ending list of business-to-business applications which drive the purchase of literally millions of devices and applications. Used by companies as small as a mom-and-pop store to as large as WalMart and JPMorganChase. And these solutions are bundled, sold, delivered and serviced by what is collectively called “the channel” for personal technology.
This “channel” emerged after Apple introduced the Apple II running VisiCalc, and businesses wanted hundreds of these machines. Later, bundling educational software with the Apple II created a near-monopoly for Apple channel partners who bundled solutions for school systems.
But, as the PC emerged this channel shifted. IBM pioneered the Microsoft-based PC, but IBM had long used a direct sales force. So its foray into personal computing did a very poor job of building a powerful sales channel. Even though the IBM PC was Time magazine’s “Man of the Year” in 1982, IBM lost its premier position largely because Microsoft took advantage of the channel opportunity to move well beyond IBM as a supplier.
Microsoft focused on building a very large network of developers creating an enormous variety of business-to-business applications on the Windows+Intel (Wintel) platform. Microsoft created training programs for developers to use its operating system and tools, while simultaneously cultivating manufacturers (such as Dell and Compaq) to build low cost machines to run the software. “Solution selling” was where VARs bundled what small businesses – and even many large businesses – needed by bringing together developer applications with manufacturer hardware.
It only took a few years for Microsoft to overtake Apple and IBM by dominating and growing the VAR channel. Apple did a poor job of creating a powerful developer network, preferring to develop everything users should want itself, so quickly it lacked a sufficient application base. IBM constantly tried to maintain its direct sales model (and upsell clients from PCs to more expensive hardware) rather than support the channel for developing applications or selling solutions based on PCs.
But, over the last several years Microsoft played “bet the company” on its launch of Windows 8. As mobile grew in hardware sales exponentially, and PC sales flattened (then declined,) Microsoft was tepid regarding any mobile offering. Under former CEO Steve Ballmer, Microsoft preferred creating an “all-in-one” solution via Win8 that it hoped would keep PC sales moving forward while slowly allowing its legions of Microsoft developers to build Win8 apps for mobile Surface devices — and what it further hoped would be other manufacturer’s tablets and phones running Win8.
This flopped. Horribly. Apple already had the “installed base” of users and mobile developers, working diligently to create new apps which could be released via its iTunes distribution platform. As a competitive offering, Google had several years previously launched the Android operating system, and companies such as HTC and Samsung had already begun building devices. Developers who wanted to move beyond Apple were already committed to Android. Microsoft was simply far too late to market with a Win8 product which gave developers and manufacturers little reason to invest.
Now Microsoft is in a very weak position. Despite much fanfare at launch, Microsoft was forced to take a nearly $1B write-off on its unsellable Surface devices. In an effort to gain a position in mobile, Microsoft previously bought phone maker Nokia, but it was simply far too late and without a good plan for how to change the Apple juggernaut.
Apple is now the dominant player in mobile, with the most users, developers and the most apps. Apple has upended the former Microsoft channel leadership position, as solution sellers are now offering Apple solutions to their mobile-hungry business customers. The merger with IBM brings even greater skill, and huge resources, to augmenting the base of business apps running on iOS and its devices (presently and in the future.) It provides encouragement to the VARs that a future stream of great products will be coming for them to sell to small, medium and even large businesses.
Caught in a situation of diminishing resources, after betting the company’s future on Windows 8 development and launch, and then seeing PC sales falter, Microsoft has now been forced to announce it is laying off 18,000 employees. Representing 14% of total staff, this is Microsoft’s largest reduction ever. Costs for the downsizing will be a massive loss of $1.1-$1.6B – just one year (almost to the day) after the huge Surface write-off.
Recognizing its extraordinarily weak market position, and that it’s acquisition of Nokia did little to build strength with developers while putting it at odds with manufacturers of other mobile devices, the company is taking some 12,000 jobs out of its Nokia division – ostensibly the acquisition made at a cost of $7.2B to blunt iPhone sales. Every other division is also suffering headcount reductions as Microsoft is forced to “circle the wagons” in an effort to find some way to “hold its ground” with historical business customers.
Today Apple is very strong in the developer community, already has a distribution capability with iTunes to which it is adding mobile payments, and is building a strong channel of VARs seeking mobile solutions. The IBM partnership strengthens this position, adds to Apple’s iOS developers, guarantees a string of new solutions for business customers and positions iOS as the platform of choice for VARs and VADs who will use iBeacon and other devices to help businesses become more capable by utilizing mobile/cloud technology.
Meanwhile, Microsoft is looking like the 7th Cavalry at the Little Bighorn. Microsoft is surrounded by competitors augmenting iOS and Android (and serious cloud service suppliers like Amazon,) resources are depleting as sales of “core” products stagnate and decline and write-offs mount, and watching as its “supply line” developer channel abandons Windows 8 for the competitive alternatives.
CEO Nadella keeps saying that that cloud solutions are Microsoft’s future, but how it will effectively compete at this late date is as unclear as the email announcement on layoffs Nokia’s head Stephen Elop sent to employees. Keeping its channel, long the source of market success for Microsoft, from leaving is Microsoft’s last stand. Unfortunately, Nadella’s challenge puts him in a position that looks a lot like General Custer.
by Adam Hartung | May 30, 2014 | Current Affairs, In the Swamp, In the Whirlpool, Leadership, Sports, Web/Tech
Anyone who reads my column knows I’ve been no fan of Steve Ballmer as CEO of Microsoft. On multiple occasions I chastised him for bad decisions around investing corporate funds in products that are unlikely to succeed. I even called him the worst CEO in America. The Washington Post even had difficulty finding reputable folks to disagree with my argument.
Unfortunately, Microsoft suffered under Mr. Ballmer. And Windows 8, as well as the Surface tablet, have come nowhere close to what was expected for their sales – and their ability to keep Microsoft relevant in a fast changing personal technology marketplace. In almost all regards, Mr. Ballmer was simply a terrible leader, largely because he had no understanding of business/product lifecycles.
Microsoft was founded by Bill Gates, who did a remarkable job of taking a start-up company from the Wellspring of an idea into one of the fastest growing adolescents of any American company.
Under Mr. Gates leadership Microsoft single-handedly overtook the original PC innovator – Apple – and left it a niche company on the edge of bankruptcy in little over a decade.
Mr. Gates kept Microsoft’s growth constantly in the double digits by not only making superior operating system software, but by pushing the company into application software which dominated the desktop (MS Office.) And when the internet came along he had the vision to be out front with Internet Explorer which crushed early innovator, and market maker, Netscape.
But then Mr. Gates turned the company over to Mr. Ballmer. And Mr. Ballmer was a leader lacking vision, or innovation. Instead of pushing Microsoft into new markets, as had Mr. Gates, he allowed the company to fixate on constant upgrades to the products which made it dominant – Windows and Office. Instead of keeping Microsoft in the Rapids of growth, he offered up a leadership designed to simply keep the company from going backward. He felt that Microsoft was a company that was “mature” and thus in need of ongoing enhancement, but not much in the way of real innovation. He trusted the market to keep growing, indefinitely, if he merely kept improving the products handed him.
As a result Microsoft stagnated. A “Reinvention Gap” developed as Vista, Windows 7, then Windows 8 and one after another Office updates did nothing to develop new customers, or new markets. Microsoft was resting on its old laurels – monopolistic control over desktop/laptop markets – without doing anything to create new markets which would keep it on the old growth trajectory of the Gates era.
Things didn’t look too bad for several years because people kept buying traditional PCs. And Ballmer famously laughed at products like Linux or Unix – and then later at entertainment devices, smart phones and tablets – as Microsoft launched, but then abandoned products like Zune, Windows CE phones and its own tablet. Ballmer kept thinking that all the market wanted was a faster, cheaper PC. Not anything really new.
And he was dead wrong. The Reinvention Gap emerged to the public when Apple came along with the iPod, iTunes, iPhone and iPad. These changed the game on Microsoft, and no longer was it good enough to simply have a better edition of an outdated technology. As PC sales began declining it was clear that Ballmer’s leadership had left the company in the Swamp, fighting off alligators and swatting at mosquitos with no strategy for how it would regain relevance against all these new competitors.
So the Board pushed him out, and demoted Gates off the Chairman’s throne. A big move, but likely too late. Fewer than 7% of companies that wander into the Swamp avoid the Whirlpool of demise. Think Univac, Wang, Lanier, DEC, Cray, Sun Microsystems (or Circuit City, Montgomery Wards, Sears.) The new CEO, Satya Nadella, has a much, much more difficult job than almost anyone thinks. Changing the trajectory of Microsoft now, after more than a decade creating the Reinvention Gap, is a task rarely accomplished. So rare we make heros of leaders who do it (Steve Jobs, Lou Gerstner, Lee Iacocca.)
So what will happen at the Clippers?
Critically, owning an NBA team is nothing like competing in the real business world. It is a closed marketplace. New competitors are not allowed, unless the current owners decide to bring in a new team. Your revenues are not just dependent upon you, but are even shared amongst the other teams. In fact your revenues aren’t even that closely tied to winning and losing. Season tickets are bought in advance, and with so many games away from home a team can do quite poorly and still generate revenue – and profit – for the owner. And this season the Indiana Pacers demonstrated that even while losing, fans will come to games. And the Philadelphia 76ers drew crowds to see if they would set a new record for the most consecutive games lost.
In America the major sports only modestly overlap, so you have a clear season to appeal to fans. And even if you don’t make it into the playoffs, you still share in the profits from games played by other teams. As a business, a team doesn’t need to win a championship to generate revenue – or make a profit. In fact, the opposite can be true as Wayne Huizenga learned owning the Championship winning Florida Marlins baseball team. He payed so much for the top players that he lost money, and ended up busting up the team and selling the franchise!
In short, owning a sports franchise doesn’t require the owner to understand lifecycles. You don’t have to understand much about business, or about business competition. You are protected from competitors, and as one of a select few in the club everyone actually works together – in a wholly uncompetitive way – to insure that everyone makes as much money as possible. You don’t even have to know anything about managing people, because you hire coaches to deal with players, and PR folks to deal with fans and media. And as said before whether or not you win games really doesn’t have much to do with how much money you make.
Most sports franchise owners are known more for their idiosyncrasies than their business acumen. They can be loud and obnoxious all they want (with very few limits.) And now that Mr. Ballmer has no investors to deal with – or for that matter vendors or cooperative parties in a complex ecosystem like personal technology – he doesn’t have to fret about understanding where markets are headed or how to compete in the future.
When it comes to acting like a person who knows little about business, but has a huge ego, fiery temper and loves to be obnoxious there is no better job than being a sports franchise owner. Mr. Ballmer should fit right in.
by Adam Hartung | Apr 8, 2014 | Current Affairs, Disruptions, In the Rapids, Innovation, Leadership
“Car dealers are idiots” said my friend as she sat down for a cocktail.
It was evening, and this Vice President of a large health care equipment company was meeting me to brainstorm some business ideas. I asked her how her day went, when she gave the response above. She then proceeded to tell me she wanted to trade in her Lexus for a new, small SUV. She had gone to the BMW dealer, and after being studiously ignored for 30 minutes she asked “do the salespeople at this dealership talk to customers?” Whereupon the salespeople fell all over themselves making really stupid excuses like “we thought you were waiting for your husband,” and “we felt you would be more comfortable when your husband arrived.”
My friend is not married. And she certainly doesn’t need a man’s help to buy a car.
She spent the next hour using her iPhone to think up every imaginable bad thing she could say about this dealer over Twitter and Facebook using various interesting hashtags and @ references.
Truthfully, almost nobody likes going to an auto dealership. Everyone can share stories about how they were talked down to by a salesperson in the showroom, treated like they were ignorant, bullied by salespeople and a slow selling process, overcharged compared to competitors for service, forced into unwanted service purchases under threat of losing warranty coverage – and a slew of other objectionable interactions. Most Americans think the act of negotiating the purchase of a new car is loathsome – and far worse than the proverbial trip to a dentist. It’s no wonder auto salespeople regularly top the list of least trusted occupations!
When internet commerce emerged in the 1990s, buying an auto on-line was the #1 most desired retail transaction in emerging customer surveys. And today the vast majority of Americans, especially Millennials, use the web and social media to research their purchase before ever stepping foot in the dreaded dealership.
Tesla heard, and built on this trend. Rather than trying to find dealers for its cars, Tesla decided it would sell them directly from the manufacturer. Which created an uproar amongst dealers who have long had a cushy “almost no way to lose money” business, due to a raft of legal protections created to support them after the great DuPont-General Motors anti-trust case.
When New Jersey regulators decided in March they would ban Tesla’s factory-direct dealerships, the company’s CEO, Elon Musk, went after Governor Christie for supporting a system that favors the few (dealers) over the customer. He has threatened to use the federal courts to overturn the state laws in favor of consumer advocacy.
It would be easy to ignore Tesla’s position, except it is not alone in recognizing the trend. TrueCar is an on-line auto shopping website which received $30M from Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s venture fund. After many state legal challenges TrueCar now claims to have figured out how to let people buy on-line with dealer delivery, and last week filed papers to go public. While this doesn’t eliminate dealers, it does largely take them out of the car-buying equation. Call it a work-around for now that appeases customers and lawyers, even if it doesn’t actually meet consumer desires for a direct relationship with the manufacturer.
Apple’s direct-to-consumer retail stores were key to saving the company
Distribution is always a tricky question for any consumer good. Apple wanted to make sure its products were positioned correctly, and priced correctly. As Apple re-emerged from near bankruptcy with new music products in the early 2000’s Apple feared electronic retailers would discount the product, be unable to feature Apple’s advantages, and hurt the brand which was in the process of rebuilding. So it opened its own stores, staffed by “geniuses” to help customers understand the brand positioning and the products’ advantages. Those stores are largely considered to have been a turning point in helping consumers move from a world of Microsoft-based laptops, Sony music products and Blackberry mobile devices to new iDevices and resurging Macintosh popularity – and sales levels.
Attacking regulations sounds – and is – a daunting task. But, when regulations support a minority of people outside the public good there is reason to expect change. American’s wanted a more pristine society, so in 1920 the 18th Amendment was passed prohibiting alcohol. However, after a decade in which rampant crime developed to support illegal alcohol production Americans passed the 21st Amendment in 1933 to repeal prohibition. What seemed like a good idea at first turned out to have more negatives than positives.
Auto dealer regulations hurt competition, and consumers
Today Americans do not need a protected group of dealers to save them from big, bad auto companies. To the contrary, forced distribution via protected dealers inhibits competition because it keeps new competitors from entering the U.S. market. Small production manufacturers, and large ones in countries like India, are effectively blocked from reaching American customers because they lack a dealer base and existing dealers are uninterested in taking the risks inherent in taking these new products to market. Likewise, starting up an auto company is fraught with distribution risks in the USA, leaving Tesla the only company to achieve any success since the dealer protection laws were passed decades ago.
And that’s why Tesla has a very good chance of succeeding. The trends all support Americans wanting to buy directly from manufacturers. At the very least this would force dealers to justify their existence, and profits, if they want to stay in business. But, better yet, it would create greater competition – as happened in the case of Apple’s re-emergence and impact on personal technology for entertainment and productivity.
Litigating to fight a trend might work for a while. Usually those in such a position are large political contributors, and use both the political process as well as legal precedent to protect their unjustified profits. NADA (National Automobile Dealers Association) is a substantial organization with very large PAC money to use across Washington. The Association can coordinate election contributions at national and state levels, as well as funding for judge elections and contributions for legal defense.
But, trends inevitably win out. Today Millennials are true on-line shoppers. They have no patience for traditional auto dealer shenanigans. After watching their parents, and grandparents, struggle for fairness with dealers they are eager for a change. As are almost all the auto buyers out there. And they are supported by consumer advocates long used to edgy tactics of auto dealers well known for skirting ethics and morality when dealing with customers. Those seeking change just need someone positioned to lead the legal effort.
Tesla wins because it uses trends to be a game changer
Tesla has shown it is well attuned to trends and what customers want. When other auto companies eschewed Tesla’s first entry as a 2-passenger sports car using laptop batteries, Tesla proceeded to sell out the product at a price much higher competitive gas-powered cars. When other auto companies thought a $70,000 electric sedan would never appeal to American buyers, Tesla again showed it understood the market best and sold out production. When industry pundits, and traditional auto company execs, said it was impossible to build a charging grid to support users driving up the coast, or cross-country, Tesla built the grid and demonstrated its functionality.
Now Tesla is the right company, in the right place, to change not only the autos Americans drive, but how Americans buy them. It’s rarely smart to refuse a trend, and almost always smart to support it. Tesla looks to be positioning itself as much smarter than older, larger auto companies once again.
