Just discovered this topic.
In my humble opinion you miss the point: the reason of the systematic failure of alternative vehicles in the past is because the car is the best vehicle in a capitalist system: it costs a lot and then force people/slaves to work a lot to afford it, it is close to a single usage vehicle (very fragile, hard and expensive to repair, etc.) and then costs even more, it is bad for health (which is good to make money), inefficient, and empowers sad instincts like lazyness, domination, individualism and power, etc.
Hence if we want to replace it effectively we should probably:
- stop to use the words « product » and « market », especially « analysis » and « competition »
- address the real future users and care only about the opinion of the people who are already more or less independent and free from the current system. You do not ask slaves if you want to learn about freedom do you?
- if possible try ourselves to change our lives and then address our new needs
- etc.
Specialized in system engineering and after years of thinking about the current one, I am convinced that global warming is only the tip of the iceberg of failure of capitalism. Hence it seems to make no sense to try to address its issues using its core concepts (« free » maket and invisible hand to be mentioned first. Note: this is an Einstein quote that seems perfectly reasonable and can then be considered true).
To summarize: we cannot make a better product than the car in a capitalist system because the car will always be THE BEST transportation product in capitalism. Hence, and if steve jobs ever said anything meaningful, the future sutainable life vehicles can only be imagined if we think out of the capitalism box !
