More often than not, the collective stupidity of a society.
Lithium ion batteries were developed in 1991 by Sony for its camcorder, because the camcorder was not taking off because of the huge cost of the conventional batteries.
Today every mobile, laptop, tablet, other portable electronic devices, and now electric cars, run on them.
Sony developed them because it wanted to make more money than before, and in the process, made lives of all of us better and less expensive.
Now electric car companies are saying that Li-ion are not good enough for us, and are in a race to develop even better batteries. And it is only a matter of time before they succeed. Elon Musk would simply become richer than all the present rich combined, but we will all have fantastic cars with a fraction of today’s running costs of a car.
The Ministry of Innovation can’t make them. The assistant deputy undersecretary of the Ministry will first move a proposal that all the officers should go on a world tour to study processes in all the labs of the world. The Minister will approve with the proviso that he would lead the team. As the team will land back in the country, there will be media reports by the leftover journalists that government money has been splurged on booze and women, there would be riot in the parliament, JPC, CVC, CBI, CAG, CJI, ED, IT probe will be instituted, and the batteries will die waiting to be innovated.
May be heartless to say, but poverty in all cases is a consequence of stupidity. More often than not, the collective stupidity of a society.
