When I've wandered through China's major cities I was amazed at the transformation to battery=powered vehicles. This included every two wheeled motor scooter I saw - including retrofitting to old egg-beaters which were originally gasoline-powered.

This abandonment of "the next technology" by the US is nothing new. The fax machine was invented in the US, but popularized in Japan.

Japanese companies which specialized in small gears and things developed the consumer dot-matrix printer (modeled after the US Centronics original). Both Citizen and Seiko (who sells printers under the Epson name) were originally wrist watch companies and Brother made sewing machines.

The Yoshika camera knocked off the Rolleiflex and SLR's from Nikon, Canon, Minolta, etc. forced Kodak to retreat from the camera business and stick to film. Those camera manufacturers morphed into photocopy manufactures and then developed into laser printer companies commercially producing the prototype idea originally invented by Xerox at Parc. Xerox now sells color laser printers manufactured by Okidata, a Japanese printer manufacturer.

Jeff