As I struggle to understand why we are propping up a clearly flawed model in our automakers, I am very excited by what I see from the newbies.  Though still too expensive for me at over $57,000, the new Tesla Model S is still extraordinarily impressive — 300 miles on a 45 minute charge and able to go zero to 60 in 5.5 seconds.

Given what we know now, it boggles the mind that Ford dropped Th!nk from its portfolio because it decided to get out of the electronic car business in 2003.  Th!nk has struggled along, mainly in Europe, but has recently secured new financing and plans to push into the U.S. market shortly.  Where they seem to excel is from the modularity of their technology.  They have basically built the core functionality of a car and allowed the battery source and outer shell to be just about anything.  Thus, they are poised for both a B2B and B2C play or both.

It is this kind of ingenuity and innovation, not just in the auto industry, which gets me up in the morning lately.  If we continue to bankroll failed models, however, we prevent or at least delay new innovations and new ideas from reaching viability.  It is easy to play it safe, hard but possibly more rewarding to be out on the edge…

UPDATE. “Electric car startup Tesla Motors has a new partner: German giant Daimler.“

A great post by Brian Magierski on how many B2C companies are using Twitter to either respond to already major complaints, like the now infamous Comcast support tweet, or who are proactively getting into the social media space to prevent/address future complaints.