Sometimes the best product still loses

In my last post, I told the story of the electric car I built and presented at COP15 in 2009.

Here’s the part I left out: the business behind it.

From 2008 to 2014, we ran Eldyt.dk - electric city cars, rented out cheaply, financed by advertising on the cars themselves. That’s why the car looked like that.

The model worked because the numbers worked. Electric cars were exempt from Denmark’s registration tax. Parking in Copenhagen was free for EVs. Charging infrastructure was growing.

None of that was ours.

The technology kept improving. Batteries got better every year. But the business case stood on ground we didn’t own: tax exemptions, municipal parking schemes, political goodwill.

Around 2013, the signals started shifting. Discussions about phasing out the tax exemption. New legislation on the way limiting how much municipalities could subsidise parking. More competitors entering a market that was still tiny.

We didn’t wait for the hammer to fall. We wound down.

Shortly after, the tax exemption began phasing out - and EV sales in Denmark collapsed almost overnight.

The lesson stayed with me: in regulated markets, uncertainty about the rules is as lethal as the rules themselves.

Engineers calculate range, IP ratings and thermal limits. Nobody puts “probability that parliament changes the foundation of your business case” in the datasheet.

Maybe we should.

I’ve since seen the same pattern in other industries - solar, heat pumps, maritime.

The technology worked. The rules changed.