Jones Beene <jone...@pacbell.net> wrote:
> There is the cynical PoV, which should not be overlooked. The Exxons of the > world do not necessarily see themselves as oil companies so much as > "enablers of personal transportation". They want your $30 and up, per week, > and do not care if they get it by leasing to you a device or an alternative > fuel. They are not going away. > Christensen and others often quote the Pennsylvania Railroad executives circa 1950. "We are not in the railroad business. We are in the transportation business." Meaning they were lean, mean, competitive fighting machines. They could take on airlines, trucks, and any other method of moving goods and people. After all, the Pennsylvania Railroad was the largest, most profitable, most politically powerful company in the U.S. in 1900. So they knew the transportation business inside and out. Right? Nope. They went clean out of business in 1970. It turns out, they understood how to lay railroad tracks and maintain rolling stock, but they did not know a thing about air transport. They never even tried to break into that market. Or any other. They never though of container traffic, which was the biggest transportation breakthrough of the 20th century. IBM in 1985 was still the biggest and most profitable computer company. They dominated the industry. They thought they owned it. It turned out, however, that they were good at mainframe computers but not other kinds of computers. They almost went out of business in the late 1980s, after losing more money than any other corporation in history. The abilities of a corporation are much narrower than the managers realize. > The oil companies have cash. They can, and will, buy the entire output of > an > LENR factory and control the supply. Then they can use LENR to make a > substitute for gasoline, and they will be happy to do it that way. > There will be no such thing as a LENR factory. LENR will be built into things like cars and space heaters, but the companies that manufacture these things. Like today's power supplies or internal combustion engines. There is no independent factory out there churning out Toyota Prius hybrid engines. All the cash in the world cannot make a petrochemical expert into someone who understand how to sell into the household appliance market, or how to design a better cold fusion auto engine. As I said, companies like GE will blow them out of the water. GE has plenty of money too. Exxon will never get a toehold into the cold fusion powered automobile market, which is one the biggest. Why would GM or Toyota give them any of it? It will be 100% their game. They will not need to send even one dollar to Exxon, so they won't send a dollar or a dime. Why should they? - Jed
