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Yes, exactly. Toyota is refusing to take the L on this because Toyota is the market leader in gas-electric hybrids and Toyota is not the market leader in EVs. T

by mhneu 4y ago

Yes, exactly. Toyota is refusing to take the L on this because Toyota is the market leader in gas-electric hybrids and Toyota is not the market leader in EVs. This is business strategy 101.

adventured 4y ago
How to cede an enormous market opportunity to a dozen other competitors 101.
silisili 4y ago
This type of thinking is what hurt Kodak ultimately I think. They invented the first digital camera, then scrapped it because they made money in film. In fairness, they did catch up decades later...but that's likely at least a couple decades of revenue lost. And never really innovating. If they'd have been more forward thinking, we'd likely see Kodak sensors in every phone today instead of Sony.
- kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
  Nobody was ready to make use of digital images until computing was enough of a presence in daily life, digital storage was cheap enough, and sensor resolution increased to compete with casual use of film. That wasn't going to happen in the 70s or 80s.
  - bluGill 4y ago
    But the technology wasn't ready when the rest of computers were. Photo CDs were good but sensors were 20 some years later
- melagonster 4y ago
  they can't do this, their company is a chemical company, changing is almost impossible.
- samatman 4y ago
  Kodak and Sears are my favorite example of this sort of thing, Kodak not only invented the digital camera, they also had a robust business in the 90s of developing color film onto both prints and a CD. Instead of seeing the writing on the wall, they resisted digital because it cut into both film, and their existing way of getting those pictures onto computers. Sears, after dominating mail-order for a century, marketed Prodigy, a successful early dial-up network. But they were by that point heavily invested in malls, and were beat out as the 21st century's Sear's, Roebuck and Co. by a bookseller.
  - scaredginger 4y ago
    I think the way to look at cases like these is to recognise organisations aren't monoliths, but a mass of individuals each tugging in their own direction. Clearly, there were inventors, progressives and visionaries within these companies that correctly predicted future trends and were trying to steer the ship to capitalise on them, but for some reason, other voices drowned them out.
    - derekp7 4y ago
      And that right there is why a good CEO can make or break a company. They don't have to be experts in everything, but they need to be good enough to tell which of their experts working for them to believe, or to bring in outside expertise when needed.
      - scaredginger 4y ago
        Completely agree. I think the darker side though is that successful individuals must not only have good ideas, but advocate for their ideas effectively. I still haven't figured that one out, personally
  - maxerickson 4y ago
    Amazon was never a bookseller. How a company that was focused on their legacy customer relationship system and logistics operations lost out to a company that was focused on building the future of customer relationships and logistics is a lot less difficult to understand.
- javajosh 4y ago
  Companies can't change their DNA any more than an individual organism can. Kodak was right to avoid digital photography - and in fact they probably should have stuck with film a little while longer even if it is niche. The public perceives DNA switches all the time, but that's an illusion generated by a free market and it's ability to plug in new sources of value (and unplug old ones) relatively seamlessly.
  - BirAdam 4y ago
    If Kodak were still making film today, hipsters would be all over it just like vinyl records.
    - llampx 4y ago
      Go to any fashionable flea market and you will see old film cameras for sale, usually by a dedicated seller who can also sell you film.
    - lytfyre 4y ago
      The remains of Kodak does make film today, albeit in fewer varieties than they once did, and with far less production capacity. Any yes, people are all over it to the point that the most popular varieties can be difficult to find in stock, and prices have climbed significantly from a few years ago.
    - midoridensha 4y ago
      There's people now trying to recreate the Polaroid instant film technology and keep it alive. Even when those cameras were current, the pictures they made looked like crap.
  - _ph_ 4y ago
    Yes, a companies DNA can be quite an obstacle to survival in changing markets, but that sounds like a cheap excuse for bad management. The reality is rather: nothing stays forever. All technology markets are in a consistant change and you always have to adapt your company constantly, if you want to survive or even prosper. One good exampel is Apple. They were a computer company which was doing well again after the return of Jobs. Then came the iPod. And revenue exploded. But when the rumors of a phone appeared, a lot of people would comment: no, they won't do that as that would eat into their cash cow iPod. But we know how this ended. They released the iPhone, grew multiple times the size the company was and eventually even stopped making iPods. Back to Kodak: they did invent the digital camera, but at a time it was way too early for being a product. But more importantly, they did bring some important digital cameras to the market in the late 90ies, the first usuable DSLR were Nikon/Canon cameras equipped with Kodak guts. They started the professional digital camera market. Without Kodak, it might have happened years later. And at that moment, when the writing for film was clearly on the wall and they actually had managed to kick start its killer, they dropped the ball. Good management would have seen that they could "protect" film sales only on a per-quarter basis, but it was a dying business. They should have used the billions of cash they still had, to gain a solid foothold in the digital camera business, perhaps even outright bought Nikon, which was limping for a while. Or invest strongly in all the adjacencies of digital imaging, which they did far too late.
- sbcdz 4y ago
  >This type of thinking is what hurt Kodak ultimately I think. They invented the first digital camera, then scrapped it because they made money in film. There is nowhere near as much money to be made in the digital camera market. They failed to adapt, but at the same time, there was no saving what was an immensely large company even if they did adapt. Film revenue for Kodak was $16 billions in 1996, adjusted for inflation that would be $30 billions, that number will make anything digital look like nothing (15 billions is the current revenue for the entirety of the digital sensor market in current dollars and Sony has 43% of that pie, a share that has been dropping as more competitors have entered the market and as Samsung kept improving.). You see a Sony sensor in many phones, but Sony doesn't make anywhere near film-era Kodak revenue on that side of their business. The higher end camera business is more profitable, but it doesn't sell much in volume, and the low end of the camera business has almost disappeared because of smartphones. (Canon, the biggest producer of digital cameras, has all but ceased making compact cameras apart from their G7X model. You can still find other models on the market but they're older unsold stock and refurbs. They also announced they would stop producing new DSLRs and will solely focus on making a narrow range of mirrorless cameras. To put it bluntly, the digital camera market is in a very unhealthy state. Don't solely look at price tags either, Leica for example makes some of the most expensive cameras on the market but.. their revenue is $400 millions, not even $1B)
  - silisili 4y ago
    This is all correct, but kinda shifting timelines. For example, if Kodak had been first to digital, that doesn't mean they'd have had to give up any film at all. And since they were first, they could have set margins where they liked. Whether it would have survived and thrived...who knows. As others have pointed out, computers weren't commonplace back then. Digital cameras did get commoditized, nearly 30 years after Kodak had invented it. So obviously, by today they'd had to have move on. High end sensors, glass, heck even cloud computing, something akin to Google Photos... there's no telling where they could have been if they'd have leaned in early. That said, you point out the sensor market is 15 billion today... and Sony has about half. This is way, way more money than Kodak makes anymore. Today Kodak is at about a billion revenue per year.
- newbie2020 4y ago
  Toyota is different. They’re also making EVs… they’re just not _only_ making EVs. If EVs really start to take off on their own, Toyota will already have multiple offerings to fill that gap
  - mhneu 4y ago
    Toyota just released their first EV and it was developed in a collaboration with Subaru. https://www.forbes.com/sites/peterlyon/2021/06/29/at-last-toyota-and-subaru-ready-their-first-electric-vehicles-for-a-2022-launch/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/peterlyon/2021/06/29/at-last-to...
    - lastofthemojito 4y ago
      It's not their first EV, there have certainly been others: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_RAV4_EV https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_RAV4_EV https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_C%2Bpod https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_C%2Bpod But it is the first one where they're aiming for mass adoption.
joshl32532 4y ago
Yeah, why would Toyota want to go all in on EV and lose the ICU/Hybrid market lead that they worked so hard to accomplish? And ICU/Hybrid are still dominating sales worldwide. You see those who go all in EV are usually those brands with not much to lose (like Volvo). It's not like they're not going in EV, they are just doing it at their pace (which is slow typical of Toyota). Tesla already got the first mover advantage. Kia/Hyundai/Ford etc are fighting for second place. The gap between second and the rest won't be as large as Tesla vs second.
- eatonphil 4y ago
  Tesla has already lost the lead in sales. BYD (Chinese brand) took over for the lead for Plug-in EV sales this year. Tesla's has decreased over time and will likely continue to decrease. Kia and Ford aren't really in the picture (among top 5 sellers). Volkswagen, SAIC and Volvo are selling more EVs than Hyundai. https://insideevs.com/news/601770/world-top-oem-ev-sales-2022h1/ https://insideevs.com/news/601770/world-top-oem-ev-sales-202...
- w0mbat 4y ago
  > Yeah, why would Toyota want to go all in on EV and lose the ICU/Hybrid market The same reason Apple went all in on the iPhone and dropped their lucrative iPod business. You drive your car on the road that takes you to the next level, not the familiar one that's heading off a cliff.

by mhneu 4y ago

Yes, exactly. Toyota is refusing to take the L on this because Toyota is the market leader in gas-electric hybrids and Toyota is not the market leader in EVs. This is business strategy 101.

adventured 4y ago

How to cede an enormous market opportunity to a dozen other competitors 101.

silisili 4y ago

This type of thinking is what hurt Kodak ultimately I think. They invented the first digital camera, then scrapped it because they made money in film. In fairness, they did catch up decades later...but that's likely at least a couple decades of revenue lost. And never really innovating. If they'd have been more forward thinking, we'd likely see Kodak sensors in every phone today instead of Sony.

kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
Nobody was ready to make use of digital images until computing was enough of a presence in daily life, digital storage was cheap enough, and sensor resolution increased to compete with casual use of film. That wasn't going to happen in the 70s or 80s.
- bluGill 4y ago
  But the technology wasn't ready when the rest of computers were. Photo CDs were good but sensors were 20 some years later
melagonster 4y ago
they can't do this, their company is a chemical company, changing is almost impossible.
samatman 4y ago
Kodak and Sears are my favorite example of this sort of thing, Kodak not only invented the digital camera, they also had a robust business in the 90s of developing color film onto both prints and a CD. Instead of seeing the writing on the wall, they resisted digital because it cut into both film, and their existing way of getting those pictures onto computers. Sears, after dominating mail-order for a century, marketed Prodigy, a successful early dial-up network. But they were by that point heavily invested in malls, and were beat out as the 21st century's Sear's, Roebuck and Co. by a bookseller.
- scaredginger 4y ago
  I think the way to look at cases like these is to recognise organisations aren't monoliths, but a mass of individuals each tugging in their own direction. Clearly, there were inventors, progressives and visionaries within these companies that correctly predicted future trends and were trying to steer the ship to capitalise on them, but for some reason, other voices drowned them out.
  - derekp7 4y ago
    And that right there is why a good CEO can make or break a company. They don't have to be experts in everything, but they need to be good enough to tell which of their experts working for them to believe, or to bring in outside expertise when needed.
    - scaredginger 4y ago
      Completely agree. I think the darker side though is that successful individuals must not only have good ideas, but advocate for their ideas effectively. I still haven't figured that one out, personally
- maxerickson 4y ago
  Amazon was never a bookseller. How a company that was focused on their legacy customer relationship system and logistics operations lost out to a company that was focused on building the future of customer relationships and logistics is a lot less difficult to understand.
javajosh 4y ago
Companies can't change their DNA any more than an individual organism can. Kodak was right to avoid digital photography - and in fact they probably should have stuck with film a little while longer even if it is niche. The public perceives DNA switches all the time, but that's an illusion generated by a free market and it's ability to plug in new sources of value (and unplug old ones) relatively seamlessly.
- BirAdam 4y ago
  If Kodak were still making film today, hipsters would be all over it just like vinyl records.
  - llampx 4y ago
    Go to any fashionable flea market and you will see old film cameras for sale, usually by a dedicated seller who can also sell you film.
  - lytfyre 4y ago
    The remains of Kodak does make film today, albeit in fewer varieties than they once did, and with far less production capacity. Any yes, people are all over it to the point that the most popular varieties can be difficult to find in stock, and prices have climbed significantly from a few years ago.
  - midoridensha 4y ago
    There's people now trying to recreate the Polaroid instant film technology and keep it alive. Even when those cameras were current, the pictures they made looked like crap.
- _ph_ 4y ago
  Yes, a companies DNA can be quite an obstacle to survival in changing markets, but that sounds like a cheap excuse for bad management. The reality is rather: nothing stays forever. All technology markets are in a consistant change and you always have to adapt your company constantly, if you want to survive or even prosper. One good exampel is Apple. They were a computer company which was doing well again after the return of Jobs. Then came the iPod. And revenue exploded. But when the rumors of a phone appeared, a lot of people would comment: no, they won't do that as that would eat into their cash cow iPod. But we know how this ended. They released the iPhone, grew multiple times the size the company was and eventually even stopped making iPods. Back to Kodak: they did invent the digital camera, but at a time it was way too early for being a product. But more importantly, they did bring some important digital cameras to the market in the late 90ies, the first usuable DSLR were Nikon/Canon cameras equipped with Kodak guts. They started the professional digital camera market. Without Kodak, it might have happened years later. And at that moment, when the writing for film was clearly on the wall and they actually had managed to kick start its killer, they dropped the ball. Good management would have seen that they could "protect" film sales only on a per-quarter basis, but it was a dying business. They should have used the billions of cash they still had, to gain a solid foothold in the digital camera business, perhaps even outright bought Nikon, which was limping for a while. Or invest strongly in all the adjacencies of digital imaging, which they did far too late.
sbcdz 4y ago
>This type of thinking is what hurt Kodak ultimately I think. They invented the first digital camera, then scrapped it because they made money in film. There is nowhere near as much money to be made in the digital camera market. They failed to adapt, but at the same time, there was no saving what was an immensely large company even if they did adapt. Film revenue for Kodak was $16 billions in 1996, adjusted for inflation that would be $30 billions, that number will make anything digital look like nothing (15 billions is the current revenue for the entirety of the digital sensor market in current dollars and Sony has 43% of that pie, a share that has been dropping as more competitors have entered the market and as Samsung kept improving.). You see a Sony sensor in many phones, but Sony doesn't make anywhere near film-era Kodak revenue on that side of their business. The higher end camera business is more profitable, but it doesn't sell much in volume, and the low end of the camera business has almost disappeared because of smartphones. (Canon, the biggest producer of digital cameras, has all but ceased making compact cameras apart from their G7X model. You can still find other models on the market but they're older unsold stock and refurbs. They also announced they would stop producing new DSLRs and will solely focus on making a narrow range of mirrorless cameras. To put it bluntly, the digital camera market is in a very unhealthy state. Don't solely look at price tags either, Leica for example makes some of the most expensive cameras on the market but.. their revenue is $400 millions, not even $1B)
- silisili 4y ago
  This is all correct, but kinda shifting timelines. For example, if Kodak had been first to digital, that doesn't mean they'd have had to give up any film at all. And since they were first, they could have set margins where they liked. Whether it would have survived and thrived...who knows. As others have pointed out, computers weren't commonplace back then. Digital cameras did get commoditized, nearly 30 years after Kodak had invented it. So obviously, by today they'd had to have move on. High end sensors, glass, heck even cloud computing, something akin to Google Photos... there's no telling where they could have been if they'd have leaned in early. That said, you point out the sensor market is 15 billion today... and Sony has about half. This is way, way more money than Kodak makes anymore. Today Kodak is at about a billion revenue per year.
newbie2020 4y ago
Toyota is different. They’re also making EVs… they’re just not _only_ making EVs. If EVs really start to take off on their own, Toyota will already have multiple offerings to fill that gap
- mhneu 4y ago
  Toyota just released their first EV and it was developed in a collaboration with Subaru. https://www.forbes.com/sites/peterlyon/2021/06/29/at-last-toyota-and-subaru-ready-their-first-electric-vehicles-for-a-2022-launch/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/peterlyon/2021/06/29/at-last-to...
  - lastofthemojito 4y ago
    It's not their first EV, there have certainly been others: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_RAV4_EV https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_RAV4_EV https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_C%2Bpod https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_C%2Bpod But it is the first one where they're aiming for mass adoption.

joshl32532 4y ago

Yeah, why would Toyota want to go all in on EV and lose the ICU/Hybrid market lead that they worked so hard to accomplish? And ICU/Hybrid are still dominating sales worldwide. You see those who go all in EV are usually those brands with not much to lose (like Volvo). It's not like they're not going in EV, they are just doing it at their pace (which is slow typical of Toyota). Tesla already got the first mover advantage. Kia/Hyundai/Ford etc are fighting for second place. The gap between second and the rest won't be as large as Tesla vs second.

eatonphil 4y ago
Tesla has already lost the lead in sales. BYD (Chinese brand) took over for the lead for Plug-in EV sales this year. Tesla's has decreased over time and will likely continue to decrease. Kia and Ford aren't really in the picture (among top 5 sellers). Volkswagen, SAIC and Volvo are selling more EVs than Hyundai. https://insideevs.com/news/601770/world-top-oem-ev-sales-2022h1/ https://insideevs.com/news/601770/world-top-oem-ev-sales-202...
w0mbat 4y ago
> Yeah, why would Toyota want to go all in on EV and lose the ICU/Hybrid market The same reason Apple went all in on the iPhone and dropped their lucrative iPod business. You drive your car on the road that takes you to the next level, not the familiar one that's heading off a cliff.