With all of the technological advances lately, couldn’t a catalytic converter be designed with cheaper materials that aren’t worth stealing?
In: 2057
You’ve stumbled on the reason why Elisabeth Holmes got herself convicted of fraud. Technological advances come in two flavors: fundamental scientific discoveries, and innovation. Fundamental scientific discoveries are considerably more rare, but make newer, better products possible in ways that could never have been accomplished before. For example, the invention of the gallium-nitride LED back in 1989 won Isamu Akasaki the nobel prize in chemistry, and also completely revolutionized electronic imagery technology, enabling flat screen TV’s, handheld phones and tablets with full color displays.
By contrast, the small changes in manufacturing techniques of flat screen displays, from twisted nematic to in-plane switching to organic light-emitting diodes are all varying innovations on that fundamental LED technology made possible back in 1989. They contributed to the progresion of technology by lowering their cost, or making them perform better, or sometimes both.
So, in the case of the catalytic converter, you’d need one of those *fundamental* scientific advancements to identify a chemical process to reduce emissions of unspent fuel, carbon monoxide, and nitrous oxide from internal combustion engines. Arguably that fundamental technology would be found in hydrogen fuel-cell technology, since the emissions of that power source are nothing but steam, or in electric cars, which produce no significant emissions by the vehicle at all. So what we’re waiting for there is the innovation on those technologies to make them more accessible, affordable, and efficient. In 2021, hybrid cars have captured 5.5% of the light vehicle market, and all-electric cars grabbed another 3.2%.
Edit: So, back to Elizabeth Holmes. What she was pitching to her investors was the ‘Edison’, an all-in-one test which would, with just a few drops of blood from a patient, screen for a huge and wide variety of possible diseases. The problem is, this is an achievement which would have required one of those fundamental scientific breakthroughs, rather than some minor innovation on existing blood sample technology. Of course, if her product had merely not worked, then she wouldn’t have been charged with anything. However, rather than admit her product was not workable after initial funding ran dry, she began to falsify the results of her tests, so as to attract further venture capital. She also lied to investors about sales & revenue.
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