They missed the electric wave sure, but as with any innovations the more competent you are in the previous wave of technology the harder it is to switch to the new one. But it's a different kind of problem.
Its weird how Toyota had the first mass-market PHEV with the Prius but got hyperfixated on hydrogen cars, and Nissan had one of the most successful BEVs (Leaf 2, maybe even Leaf 1) and just sort-of gave up. I vaguely remember Honda having a decent EV.
I wonder what makes EVs so antithetical to Japanese car companies..
In my opinion this is complete nonsense and after decades very little has happened.
Even for planes I don't think its the future. Just going one step further and making SAF is just a better plan.
With hopefully more trains, and electric planes for many shorter routes.
I'm not sure about your statement here after the wet timing belt inside engine debacle for many European cars engines including Renault that's still existed until today. It's a total disregards of the laws on material physics and chemistry [1], [2].
[1] Wet Belt in Oil Engines: Who Approved This and Why Is It Still Being Made [video]:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SASSFjIt5I
[2] Why So Many People Hate Wet Timing Belts:
https://www.theautopian.com/why-so-many-people-hate-wet-timi...
I disagree with this statement.
The greatest engineer, scientist and inventor of all time, Stanford Ovshinsky, absolutely had no problem excelling in any field he put his mind to.
Organizations OTOH typically develop inertia when it comes to their goals and purpose. Any change takes time to communicate through the organization for one thing. People are conditioned to push the Pavlovian success buttons of the past, for another. Managing budgets, stakeholder expectations, and the disconnect between leadership and the ground level are a whole other class of issues.
So, because the greatest engineer according to your words excels at something. So it's easy for everybody to do the same?
Possibly there was a smarter mechanical engineer than Mr. Ovshinsky, it would be hard for anyone to argue he wasn’t in the top 0.1% in his field(s).
Why a top engineer in the field of making petrol powered cars shouldn’t be able to quickly learn a “new field”, using quotation marks here because electric cars have been around for >100 years, is beyond my understanding.
I find that these companies have something very unique about themselves in terms of culture. And you lose a lot when you try to change it.
For eg. a lot of expats in Tokyo have this attitude that Japanese companies are dim-wits and that they have "westernize" and become English-speaking techbros (Rakuten calls this English-nization).
There might be some things that can be emulated better, but the solution always tends to be a bit too... christian, or rather monotheistic (ie . wipe out everything before and mass replace).
