Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by Dylan16807 1790 days ago
Has there ever been an example of that failing in history? I'm not sure you can find any historical situation that's close enough to this one to make a good analogy, especially because hydrogen isn't even a good fuel to start with.

> Even with lots of money, I think that’s a story of how to go bankrupt.

Well on a pure product/market basis they probably never should have made these hydrogen cars at all.
2 comments
eigen 1789 days ago
> Has there ever been an example of that failing in history? I'm not sure you can find any historical situation that's close enough to this one to make a good analogy, especially because hydrogen isn't even a good fuel to start with.

I'd think Iridium satellite phone is a great example of this. Motorola spent $5B to setup a constellation of satellites to sell $3k phones. It failed. turns out spending a ton of money to create a market is a huge gamble and the market can move in unexpected ways.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iridium_satellite_constellatio...

link
gonehome 1790 days ago
> Has there ever been an example of that failing in history?

Zune, Windows Phone, Betamax, HD-DVD - maybe not perfect analogies, but there are lots of examples of people throwing lots of money at something to try to force widespread adoption and failing because the market doesn’t want it.

link
Dylan16807 1790 days ago
If betamax and HD-DVD count as failures, then surely VHS and bluray count as successes?

The other two don't work as well as infrastructure analogies.

link
gonehome 1790 days ago
Arguably Bluray and VHS were already winning in those instances? They'd be the EV to Hydrogen's example, though it's a bit of a strained metaphor.

I think it's rare for something without adoption to get taken up just because a larger player tries to use funds to force it to against the way the market is already going. I think Windows Phone is a pretty good example.

Hydrogen adoption had a lot of issues of which infrastructure was just (a big) one.

link
simondotau 1789 days ago
Betamax was not a failure, it just took second place to VHS in the consumer market where rental tapes was the dominant use case. Betamax still had moderate market share and found success in various professional niches.

Listing it alongside actual failures like HD-DVD is disingenuous.

link