&gt;The actual engineers working on the project (including the one in this &quot;spat&quot;) at some point realize the actual limitations of what is possible physics wise.<p>I read until here and would like to cut you off.  So, at this point, can you tell me YOUR perspective on the alternate history where the company,  exactly at this point, starts behaving exactly  like Apple, consumer-driven instead of fundamental R&amp;D driven, and simply pivots and enters some totally unrelated part of the power or battery market.  Literally any other part of it - not just super capacitors (which were making the rounds around that time) but literally ANY part of the market, since they had obscene gobs of money in the bank for the stage they were at ($10M+) and lots of extremely talented engineers.<p>What would have happened?  Could they have retained their goodwill,  credibility,  and name,  and simply successfully pivoted?