Man 2 years ago I wrote a long letter to Mazda telling them they needed to lean into EVs, it was an actual physical letter - I never got a response. But I was begging them to just try to shoot for something small and fun like the Chevy Bolt.

Some of my career I worked directly under exec staff for huge companies in innovation focused roles, where we were trying to navigate how to innovate and where to innovate for huge companies. One of the more influential well known books in the space is “The innovators dilemma” (excellent read BTW), and the CTO of one of the worlds largest companies had me read this as part of my advisory roll. Anyways I kept pushing for things which were called out in the book, and I only later discovered he himself had never read the book and failed to grasp many of the core concepts.

I’ve tried unsuccessfully in my career to compel companies, who have hired me into innovation focused rolls to apply lessons from books such as the innovators dilemma, and failed consistently, the closest we got was all skunk works until the mainline business discovered the skunk works and shut it down - a scenario called out exactly in the innovators dilemma.

I can imagine the discussions at Mazda.

One of my friends was a high up employee at Honda and left because of the same kind of malaise when it came to innovation.

One of the most beautiful cars ever made had amazingly fantastic aerodynamics. (IMHO)

The third generation RX7 by Mazda has stellar aerodynamics and in the aerodynamics automotive textbooks is held out as an example of how to do it right.