Successful Failures

 In my Air Force later years, we came to have a phrase that we uttered at least once a week....'a successful failure'.  It meant, with all the hours, effort, funding, and chatter discussed....it had to be a success, but at the same time....the design was such that it never really took off or worked as planned.  Some people in charge of such programs....got promoted....some got medals or awards....some innovations were dumped later for newer 'successful failures' to replace them.

I tend to look at the E-car business being discussed in Germany and the effort to halt all new gas/diesel car sales, and see a 'successful failure' in the making.

So I'm going to offer five reasons why I see this trending downward in five to eight years:

1.  At some point, the federal government will realize that the bulk of society live in buildings where mass charger ports simply won't be possible. Even if you went to mass public charger stations....it simply won't be enough to allow the public easy access or easy recharging.

2.  I see people grasping at some point that a financial cost/charge will be created when batteries reach a point that you have to take the old batteries out of the car, and the mechanic says fine.....but writes the fee down (I think it'll be near 1,000 Euro). At that point, you will question how this fee came to be.

3.  In the midst of extreme winter-like conditions....the public will realize that you've lost around one-third of your charge and battery usage.....particularly if the car is outside of a parking garage....meaning winter charging will be a BIG deal.  

4.  At least once a year in your village....some lightning storm will occur, and the strike will take down the whole house, the charger, and run onto the batteries of the E-car....making it non-functional for two-to-three weeks.  You will end up arguing with the insurance guy about the payment and special insurance will start be mandated because of this problem.

5.  In the midst of extreme summers (36 C or above)....you will realize that running the AC unit in the car quickly decreases the battery power.  So you start to lower your windows and get heat exhaustion because you really can't afford to lose more power on the standard trip to work each day.

The problem here....we need to experience these failures, in order to learn from them.  As my dad often said.....you need lessons in life to get rid of stupidity.