In the early 2000s, a guy made a meme with two pictures and two accompanying statements that I thought was funny. The first said, “What I used to want in a car stereo.” The second said, “What I want now.” The picture for what he used to want was a stereo with lots of buttons and lights and knobs. The picture for what he wanted now was a picture of an auxiliary port for his iPod. (Remember, it was the early 2000s, and bluetooth technology hadn’t taken off yet.)

In 2012, Sprint came out with the HTC EVO phone. What was their big draw? How were they going to peel away customers from the oh-so-loved iPhone? They gave their phone a kickstand. Their advertisements toted this kickstand as though the phone mattered little and the stand mattered a lot. Note that they promoted the kickstand over the increased speed of data communications (the first 4G phone).

Companies are very reluctant to move beyond the past. They are unwilling to “cannibalize” their old products in order to progress. Here’s a picture of a home stereo currently offered by Best Buy with all the lights and knobs that your 90’s heart desired.

What happens when old companies refuse to progress? Innovative and new companies disrupt. Apple comes out with a phone that is not only sans kickstand, it doesn’t have a stylus. And just when everyone else gets rid of their stylus, Apple comes out with a stylus! (Called the pencil, it’s used to draw on tablets.) Consider that astounding and accurate head fake by a massive company. They got rid of the stylus when it was useless and brought it back when it became useful. Other companies have now followed suit: Logitech has come out with the Crayon.

Amazon came out with a stereo. Not only does it not have knobs, it doesn’t even have an auxiliary port! You talk to the thing! Other companies quickly followed suit. Now we have the Amazon Echo, the Apple Home, and Google’s equivalent. (Notably, Microsoft and Yahoo are still terrible and can’t seem to build things that work.)

We can see this trend happening right now.

Let’s take a look at Tesla’s Model S dashboard.

It’s clean. The dashboard consists of a large screen in the middle and a screen behind the wheel more in line with the driver’s field-of-view.

Here’s the model 3’s dashboard.

This newer car has even less; it has a single screen. I don’t think it’s quite as aesthetically pleasing as the Model S, but that was probably done for the cost reduction desired in the model 3.

Here’s the dashboard from Tesla’s semi-truck.

The driver is presented with two screens and a wheel. To reduce drag and increase efficiency, the rear view windows have been replaced with cameras; their images are shown on the edges of the screens. It’s minimal and effective.

Porsche has recently released an electric car: the Taycan. Here’s an image of its dashboard.

The Taycan has five separate touchscreens. 5! Because, you see, it’s the number of touchscreens that matters. (I wonder if they’ll also give the Taycan a kickstand.) It looks to me like at least one of the touchscreens, the one nearest the passenger seat, would require the driver to lean away from the wheel in a dangerous way. There are at least three different screens for controlling the phone, music, and maps.

Most amazingly, the 5 different touchscreens are somehow not enough. The top of the dashboard shows a physical dial that Porsche added; it’s a timer! And what’s inside the timer? A digital clock that simulates LEDs!!! With 5 different touchscreens, they added a physical timer (from the 1900s) with a digital clock (from the 1970s) inside it. The absurdity of this cannot be overstated.

Porsche is largely presenting the past as its latest offering.

To complement this, Porsche almost immediately started lying about the car. They labeled the car with “turbo” [2]. So what is turbo? An engine that consumes fuel is a series of timed explosions that propel movement. These explosions of fuel combined with oxygen generate exhaust, and that exhaust still has some energy contained in it. A turbo-charged engine is one that takes advantage of the remaining energy in the exhaust to reduce the inefficiencies of the engine.

Do you see the stupidity of calling an electric motor Turbo? There’s no exhaust! And there’s no way to take advantage of an absent exhaust. This illegitimacy was announced by Elon Musk and supported by Paul Graham (two astoundingly successful engineers and businessmen):

This type of story is not new.

“Mr. Janss, when you buy an automobile, you don’t want it to have rose windows, a lion on each fender and an angel sitting on the roof. Why don’t you?

“That would be silly,” stated Mr. Janss.

“Why would it be silly? Now I think it would be beautiful. Besides, Louis the Fourteenth had a carriage like that and what was good enough for Louis is good enough for us. We shouldn’t go in for rash innovations and we shouldn’t break with tradition.”

“Now you know damn well you don’t believe anything of the sort!”

-Ayn Rand, The Foutainhead

[1] https://www.designboom.com/technology/porsche-taycan-electric-car-09-05-2019/

[2] https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-slams-porsche-taycan-turbo-on-twitter-2019-9