There was information this month out of Japan and Germany of extraordinary leaps on the horizon in battery know-how — the type of big advances that can drive down prices and charging occasions.

Strong-state batteries promise to make electrical automobiles functionally indistinguishable from as we speak’s combustion-powered cars. They’re game-changing.

Possibly you need to be a sure age, but it surely all simply struck me as so acquainted, like I’ve lived by means of this earlier than.

After which the reminiscence got here again: the primary Apple Macintosh.

I used to be in school within the mid-Nineteen Eighties when my college provided college students a chance to purchase a Macintosh, which did not look or act something like its DOS-based rivals. It nonetheless makes me snort as we speak that we sprang for the additional 20-megabyte exterior arduous drive, upon which the Mac, with its built-in black-on-white display screen, would sit, and which I confidently defined to my father that we’d “by no means refill.”

The Mac was completely different, higher than anything available on the market on the time, and it destroyed the linear evolution that these answerable for DOS-based computing had been pursuing. To personal a Mac made you completely different from the remainder of the world — higher in some methods, like ease of use — however at a considerable price: The software program accessible for DOS-based and later Home windows-based machines dwarfed that accessible for the Macintosh.

The opposite machines additionally grew to become far cheaper and higher over time as a result of there have been myriad corporations manufacturing them, and competitors drove down costs. When Microsoft emulated/copied/borrowed the Mac’s higher human-machine interface with Home windows 3.0 and later, the hole closed considerably, and the Apple’s increased prices started to look very prohibitive to all however Apple’s most devoted followers.

For the youthful set, the identical drama primarily replayed itself many years later with the smartphone, besides it wasn’t Microsoft on the opposite facet of the battle for dominance from Apple, however Google.

So what does all this historical laptop historical past must do with EVs? Nicely, I’d argue that the parallels between Apple’s Macintosh expertise and Tesla are about to go loads deeper than simply their shared California roots.

Just like the Macintosh, Tesla’s cutting-edge improvements — on EVs and, particularly, batteries — gave it a definite technological edge over would-be rivals in a recreation a lot of them by no means wished to play. The remainder of the worldwide auto business in all probability would have been very comfortable to proceed working with their century-old inner combustion engines, constructing pickups and evolving ICEs over time to make them extra environment friendly and highly effective, permitting Tesla to play with electrons all by itself.

Emissions rules and the local weather disaster modified that equation, nevertheless, and compelled legacy automakers into the EV enterprise, pushing their engineering prowess and their established methods of bettering merchandise and manufacturing at quantity onto Tesla’s enjoying area. Similar to the {hardware} and software program makers from many years in the past, the legacy automakers began out manner behind, and their preliminary efforts weren’t nearly as good as Tesla.

However identical to Apple, I might argue that Tesla is now trapped in its personal ecosystem. Whereas Toyota, Volkswagen, Common Motors and different legacy automakers are free to discover and undertake completely different battery applied sciences, akin to strong state, Tesla’s investments are all one-way: its Gigafactories produce confirmed battery packs. They’re higher than what’s accessible as we speak, definitely, however will they stand as much as a barrage of vitality storage innovation for a decade or extra? I am uncertain.

I solely ever purchased one Macintosh. By the point I used to be prepared for a brand new laptop, Home windows-based machines had been far cheaper, met my wants and had been way more versatile by way of the software program they may run.

I not needed to pay a premium — nor was I keen to — for the Apple identify or marginally higher consumer interface. Others had the identical thought, although Apple has retained and grown a steady core of aficionados for its computer systems for many years.

So what does the EV panorama seem like a decade — one, perhaps two product cycles — from now? I’ve little doubt that Tesla will nonetheless be a giant participant, perhaps even the largest single participant on the EV area. And it’ll nonetheless have some substantial aggressive benefits, together with its current valuation.

However identical to Apple, Tesla will discover itself surrounded by no less than a dozen automakers and types, together with some with their very own very deep pockets and international footprints — every making it tougher and tougher for Tesla to proceed to stay in its personal little world.