Is The Electric Car Revolution The Equivalent To The Quartz Crisis?

To be honest, I, and many others, do not believe that quartz caused a crisis.  Instead, there was a currency appreciation which decimated the watch industry.  

The facts don't really support the fable of the quartz crisis.  More on this at the link below

horolonomics.com/2021/03/absolving-quartz.html

Not everything electric is bad by extension with that analogy. We like mechanical watches because they last longer than quartz, the same cannot be said about a combustion engine. 

I drive an electric car and own mechanical watches. I don't miss the hours I used to spend under the car changing oils/belts/coolant. If you've ever done a valve adjustment, you will be surprised every time your car actually starts 😆. You don't want a steam powered iPad do you?

For me, it's too soon to tell. The tech may be past the infant stage, but it's still a toddler. To be sure, the gas powered engine will eventually go the way of the dodo bird, but I think it will share the road with electrics for a long time still. 

I completely agree with Archie, and have said it many times on my show (please subscribe!) 

The analogy is apt. Frankly, government intervention can only accelerate adoption, it cannot create a need. If the people didn't want that Tesla, all the incentive in the world wouldn't make them but it.

EVs are everything to Quartz as ICE cars are to mechanical watches. EVs are more efficient, precise, accurate, and cost-effective than ICE cars. They will displace a significant amount of the car market, as quartz has to the watch market.

The quartz crisis began as a trade war between Japan and Switzerland, with Japan using new tech. It has now grown to encompass the migration to a Cloud-oriented IoT-enabled environment where a smart watch displaced both the mechanical and that quartz watch.

Cars are just going through it now.

I'm looking forward to driving an electric car in the future. I watched the Jetsons cartoon as a child so a self driving car that's good for the environment might feel futuristic in a child like way, on my first ever drive. 

Personally, I think combustion engine cars (particular models, not all) will shoot up in price and become collectors items. Something relatively affordable today, like a Porsche Boxster or the classic Honda Civic type R, will be much more pricey than most electric vehicles in the future. Even with the pain involved with changing the coolant! 😂  

I have a somewhat contrarian take on EVs.  Based on constant, ubiquitous, and breathless media coverage, we might guess that at least 50% of all new vehicles purchased in the U.S. were EVs.  It might be surprising, but in H1 '21, the actual number was ~2.5%:  

https://insideevs.com/news/526699/us-electric-car-registrations-2021h1/

And, that's with a $7,500 federal tax credit to incentivize you to buy one!!!  To make the math simple, let's assume that the median price of a new EV in the U.S. is ~$50k.  If we make that simplifying assumption, the federal government is literally trying to get us to buy these things by dangling 15% of the purchase price in front of us (not to mention state government incentives), and even then only 97.5% of us are looking at 75 Benjamins sitting in front of our eyes, and saying, "Yeah...  thanks but no thanks."

You know who else has ~2.5% marketshare in a market that we're interested in?  Hublot.  Hublot has ~2.5% marketshare in Swiss watch-making.

https://monochrome-watches.com/top-50-swiss-watch-brands-2020-market-share-sales-editorial/

The question we'd ask is:  If the U.S. federal government were to subsidize the purchase of a new Hublot to the tune of 15% of MSRP, would your next watch purchase be a Hublot?

The topic as espoused in the link is surely interesting, but really not complete by any means. Surely, the high CHF rate of the time did affect sales in some manner.

However, there were other things taking shape: so-called 'high beat' mechanical wristwatches from the Japanese were winning accuracy prizes in several Swiss timing competitions in Neuchatel and elsewhere and the Swiss had no response to this (except to bar the Japanese from entering the competitions after they won prestigious prizes). 

At that time the entire Swiss industry used accuracy as a measure of quality and why their watches were expensive - and they were losing the upper hand fast; with the popularity of quartz offering further superior chronometric results at lower prices, the problem became intense. The rate of the CHF might have had an effect, but this miasma of stupor of the Swiss and their lack of response to accuracy issues was the real problem - and this is what is meant by the quartz crisis.

Pricing? Does anyone here remember the price of the then new Pulsar from Shreve Crump and Lowe in Boston when it came out in the 1970's ? It was almost 10x more costly than my simple GP mechanical watch that I bought there in 1976. And the Pulsar's batteries lasted only a few months (if that) and they were also very expensive. 

The rise of the CHF as the only source of the quartz crisis does not hold water when you examine watch pricing separately from the CHF value, together with accuracy questions - which is what fuelled the 'quartz crisis.' 

Thank you for reading considering and commenting.  Perhaps I will at some point find the time to explore, statistically, which of the numerous factors involved in the Swiss crisis is more responsible for that crisis.  I think we can all agree that, at this point, calling it a quartz crisis lacks the subtlety that is required when describing the episode.  It was most certainly multifactorial.

We agree! The term 'quartz crisis' is merely an overused umbrella description. I guess it is the same problem as when discussing history: WWI started because the archdukke was assasinated...A singularity, a 'triggering event' (no pun intended in regards to the archduke!), invariably is composed of complex threads. The CHF story is new for me and a quite interesting addition of info to this period of watchmaking history.

I think for there to be an actual equivalent, the infrastructure and practicality of ownership of ev needs to be at parity or greater than internal combustion. A quartz watch is fundamentally more practical from an accuracy and maintenance standpoint than mechanical, which is why it became immensely popular. By contrast there are some practical obstacles (namely charging time and availability of chargepoints) that have to be overcome to the point where internal combustion no longer makes practical sense for the entire car buying market. Then we might see a much more pronounced shift towards EV

The quartz crisis came about because of advancing, inexpensive tech that was more accurate as well as the Swiss' failure to prepare. 

EV is being mandated my many governments and with oil being a finite resource, that's a good thing. But until EVs are less expensive than ICE automobiles and until they are vastly improved, the ICE will reign supreme. 

One could draw an analogy. Quartz is technically and functionally superior, EV is technically and functionally superior.

Just started listening to the InEVitable podcast the other week, check it out if you haven't already been a fun listen so far

My short answer is no, not similar- I'd probably liken it more to snail mail vs. email but I'm just a dude on the internet 

Would be nice if electric car prices fell as much and as quickly as quartz watch prices. Right now electric cars are high margin (Tesla reportedly gets 27% per vehicle), luxury items.