We Could Have Had Electric Cars from the Beginning

https://longreads.com/2019/06/13/we-could-have-had-electric-cars-from-the-very-beginning/

by mibzman • 7 years ago

215 267 7 years ago

lgleason2• 7 years ago

Battery technology has been, and to a certain degree still is the limiting factor for electric cars...and the fact is that gasoline is still a denser form of energy storage than batteries by volume, weight etc..

I'm saying this as a someone who prefers electrics over ICE...

wmf2• 7 years ago

Nuclear is denser than gasoline but we don't run cars on it. There's a lot more to the discussion than the best technology.

lgleason2• 7 years ago

There are other issues with nuclear that made it not the best technology. https://www.autoblog.com/2014/07/17/nuclear-powered-atomic-a...

Like I said before. I am a big fan of electrics. Currently drive a Volt and plan on getting a Tesla eventually, but am not blind to it's faults.

If we were talking about what lead to using leaded gasoline there is a different argument because that could have been avoided.

Given the lower population density and the fact that in the early 1900's a large percentage of the population did not have electricity to charge the batteries.. when you factor that in with the other issues of electric cars vs ICE I can see why electric cars did not take hold at that time.

jerrysievert2• 7 years ago

not for lack of trying: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Nucleon

but there are a lot of reasons why it never made it into production.

willyg123• 7 years ago

We could be running all electric cars on nuclear, indirectly, if we would start building more power plants.

cue the anti-nuclear power comments

ummwhat• 7 years ago

Not for lack of trying.

https://youtu.be/kR5gefU87TY

jacquesm4• 7 years ago

You meant 'there is a lot more to the discussion than the density of the energy carrier'.

A nuclear vehicle would be impractical due to waste and risk.

pushpop• 7 years ago

You’re right, otherwise we’d all be powering our cars with with zero point energy reactors.

Clearly feasibility has a big part to play as well and everyone driving around little fission reactors would be ridiculously impractical from both an engineering standpoint, as well as a safety one too. Not to mention it becoming a terrorists wet dream because of all the waste material. (Not that I’m normally one to play the “terrorist” card)

inflatableDodo• 7 years ago

Thankfully, Stack Exchange has provided some guidance on these matters.

'Practicality of a thorium-powered, superheated-steam car?' https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/69576/prac...

NeedMoreTea3• 7 years ago

It's perhaps a more limiting factor now than then.

As the article notes most EVs at the turn of the century had a range of 40-70 miles. The model T of around 1910, ten years later, had a range of about 90. Earlier ICE cars were down nearer EVs.

A century ago battery and ICE technology were not that far apart. i.e. both fairly primitive. If electrics had been chosen and had 100 years of continual minor incremental improvements...

vvanders• 7 years ago

I've had the same thought about rotary motors, they're interesting beasts and I wonder what we'd see if they had the same R&D investment like we saw in piston engines.

Alas I think that ship has sailed, aside from energy density the modern electric VFD wins along a whole range of design constraints(torque, size, latency/traction response, efficiency, etc).

smileysteve5• 7 years ago

we're also omitting the steam car.

Where the maintenance and dirtiness were their major detractors, refined fuels and new burners solve these.

Steam engines can and could have been refilled at any gas station, could run on any multi fuel including biodiesel. They theoretically require less maintenance, no oil changes, no cooling system.

They'd also have had greater range and greater top speed (though less acceleration without a hybrid design)

graycat4• 7 years ago

If electrics had been chosen and had 100 years of continual minor incremental improvements...

Battery technology is still basically just ordinary chemistry and, thus, hasn't made much progress in 100 years. E.g., we use a lead acid battery in cars now, and they had lead acid batteries back then.

Just look at the periodic table, pick some elements, and make a battery. They did that 100 years ago also.

If we do something special with graphene, high temperature superconductivity, maybe still with a capacitor of "doped barium-calcium-zirconium-titanate", etc., technology not known 100 years ago, fine, but these are all long shots, both as in risky and how long it will take to be successful or give up.

Gas-electric hybrid involves essentially two engines instead of one but can do some amazing things, e.g.,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWZci9dUROM

soperj2• 7 years ago

Given that they were both range limited at the time, it was more likely the time to fill that had an impact.

Tade02• 7 years ago

I think that if, then only in terms of cost.

Every quarter or so I do a 1500km(935 mile) trip and back. Nowadays it takes me two days, because I realized that spending around 20h behind the wheel without rest is simply dangerous.

My car's highway range is about 440 miles - but I rarely drive that far without refueling because the longest distance between my usual stops is 350 miles. And once stopped I don't just fill up an move along - I stretch my legs, grab something to eat etc.

My point being: given that the newest Model S achieves 370 miles and my favourite spots all happen to have superchargers I could probably pull this off in a Tesla adding maybe one stop and one hour to my trip.

We're there in terms of range. Now all that is needed is a reduction in cost.

Shivetya• 7 years ago

1600 round mile trip, give or take. Georgia to Western Ohio then across to Eastern Pennsylvania, relatives in Eastern to North Eastern Ohio but that is an EV desert. I did this within weeks of buying a Model 3 LR. Added about ninety minutes to the 600 mile drive. Three stops. I did ignore the Navigation charge time so I could avoid the SC inside of Cincinnati.

If you follow the suggestions of the car and are willing to stop more the charge times are lower. However as I was hoping 190 to 210 at a time and driving the standard speed of I75 at the time I tended to push the charge to 80% or more.

Now the reason there is ninety minutes is you need to factor in charging at your destination. Seeing that my relatives had nothing more than standard 120 I was in effect anchored to my closest SC which was thirty six miles away. So at that point I charged to 95% which took longer. They don't live in a small Ohio town but there were only two good chargers, one at Nissan and one at the Ford dealer. Neither is good for a true long range car.

After that trip I realized there really is no point in carrying the mobile charge cable. I simply found hotels with nearby SC setups. Do not rely on destination charging as you are just as likely to find "guests" who act as if they own it and hotels are not keen on stepping in. There are times I swear fellow EV drivers are the most entitled pricks I have ever met.

closeparen2• 7 years ago

One hour per stop, maybe. It’s 75 minutes to fully charge the original version, so likely a bit more for the long range.

esotericn2• 7 years ago

Agree.

The posters talking about 500 mile journeys without a single stop strike me as being frankly bonkers.

Yeah, you can do it. Unless your concentration is fundamentally different to most human beings, you shouldn't sit in a car for 8 hours straight without a break.

On the Model S, on an infinite distance journey, supercharging increases journey time by about 20-30% maximum over driving all the way without a break (takes about 20 mins to charge 120 miles or 20-60%).

Spending 12-13 hours to do a 10 hour drive is fairly normal for me even in an ICE car unless you want to like, eat sandwiches at the wheel and piss into a bottle whilst driving.

emilecantin2• 7 years ago

I've done a roadtrip from Montreal to Atlanta in a Model S, back in 2015. I've found that by the time the battery runs low, you're due for a break anyway, so it doesn't really change the way you travel that much.

avar4• 7 years ago

Where do you live where your favorite spots happen to have superchargers?

I've looked into buying a Tesla and part of the reason I dismissed it is because here in Western Europe the supercharger stations are all in some bleak industrial estate by the highway usually next to a McDonalds or 1-2 restaurants.

I recently did a 1200 km drive between the Netherlands and Denmark & back. Looking at a map there's a supercharger every 100 km or so around that route, but having looked at some road trip videos on YouTube from Tesla owners their long distance trip becomes all about planning around the charging times.

I.e. I might drive for 6 hours with brief 3-4 brief 5-10 minute stops along the way, and maybe have lunch at some nice restaurant in a forest by the highway. Also, if you have young kids you really appreciate being able to loosely plan stops. I.e. "kids are asleep, let's keep driving" and "they just woke up, let's stop in the next 5 minutes for lunch".

Changing that sort of trip to introduce the variable that we must stop for 40 or so minutes (for 80% charging) in specific charging stations along the way might work for some, but I can't see how to plan around it without a lot of hassle. I'm not going to seriously consider an electric car unless there's something like Tesla's proposed battery swap where "refueling" takes less than 5 minutes.

Causality12• 7 years ago

They could've worked in cities. Lead-acid batteries, though, have never had the energy/weight ratio necessary for the type of long-range driving necessary outside of highly urbanized areas.

jacquesm4• 7 years ago

Likely if the fossil fuel bonanza had not happened there would have been more interest in improving battery chemistry.

Something1234• 7 years ago

I would say that fossil fuels are very important for a lot of our battery technology. I believe that a large number of important chemicals and materials like plastics are derived from oil.

bmurphy1976• 7 years ago

Or more public transportation.

soperj2• 7 years ago

And we would have all been better off. Cities would have been much more livable, and walkable, and people could commute by train/plane.

Causality12• 7 years ago

More livable for the urbanites. Everybody else, like my relatives who still live on dirt roads, can go screw themselves apparently.

Gibbon12• 7 years ago

I think people tend to forget that before 1900-1940 if you were outside of the city; no electricity.

qroshan• 7 years ago

and of course charging times, cold weather performance, real range (it's funny how advertising pamphlets are taken on face value as facts)

munk-a2• 7 years ago

Not everyone has always had access to everything... internet in rural districts used to be rare as well.

I don't think you can really make any sort of meaningful conclusion from this - rural areas tend to lag in this sort of innovation.

rb8082• 7 years ago

You can visit Thomas Edison's house with his lab near Newark NJ. There are two electric cars on display. Interestingly here it says in 1914 38% of all the cars on the road were electric; 22% gasoline, 40% steam powered.

http://www.edisonmuckers.org/edisons-cars/

whenchamenia2• 7 years ago

Of all the pre-war cars I have been in or around... only steam had the power to throw you back in the seat. It would be interesting to see a modern multifuel interpretation of one. Might be well suited to long runtimes and alternate fuels.

mysterydip• 7 years ago

Not exactly what you asked for, but have you seen BMW's turbosteamer concept? https://newatlas.com/go/4936/

aidenn0• 7 years ago

The problem with steam is that external combustion tends to be very fuel inefficient compared to internal combustion. This is true in general, but becomes even more true when you constrain the size and weight of the engine.

javajuice• 7 years ago

Gives a real context to ‘steampunk’ ... imagine if we had developed that way...

m-i-l2• 7 years ago

"In 1914: 38% of all the cars on the road were electric; 22% gasoline, 40% steam powered."[0] "by 1917, only 50,000 electrics were registered compared to 3.5 million IC cars. Steamers were all but gone"[1]

Assuming both sets of stats are correct, it sounds like something happened between 1914 and 1917 that led to the switch from electric (or steam) cars to ones powered by internal combustion engines. Perhaps the First World War?

[0] Parent comment reference, i.e. http://www.edisonmuckers.org/edisons-cars/

[1] Main story link, i.e. https://longreads.com/2019/06/13/we-could-have-had-electric-...

mywittyname2• 7 years ago

Jay Leno has a YouTube channel with several episodes on his steam-powered vehicles, if anyone is interested. He goes through the enormously complicated startup procedure, which takes about 45 minutes. His comment was that most people who could afford a car could afford "a man" who would take care of all of this every morning.

I imagine the democratization of automobiles in the teens and 20s lead to the cheapest solution winning.

rb8082• 7 years ago

Looks like 1.7m model Ts were built around that time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Model_T#Price_and_product...

Swizec5• 7 years ago

We also could have had steam powered cars. Jay Leno once said that he got pulled over on the freeway for breaking the speed limit in his Stanley Steamer from 1906-ish. Darn thing has a top speed of 127mph.

My 2018 motorcycle tops out at 110mph, to give you a comparison.

Why don't we have steam cars?

Because in the early 1900's steam cars they couldn't compete with the elegance of ICE vehicles. The engines were big and heavy, the fuel was hard to manage, they took a long time to warm up, etc etc. The internal combustion engine was just a way better tool for the job.

Same reason electric cars didn't win: The ICE was just a way better tool for the job at the time. This is now changing, but very slowly.

Tesla, for example, still doesn't have an official Nurburgring lap time because it simply isn't able to drive at racing speeds for long enough without the battery overheating and reducing power output to avoid damage. Yes racing electric cars exist and they're awesome, but even Formula E swaps cars in the middle of the race because a single car can't last long enough.[1]

It does look like VW's electric supercar currently attacking the Nurburgring lap record. Already holds the absolute record for Pikes Peak. Exciting times we live in :)[2]

[1] https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-time-clocked-in-by-Tesla-M...

[2]https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/05/vws-record-breaking-ele...

wmf2• 7 years ago

Isn't the whole point of the article that ICE was not way better and racing is a harmful distraction?

Swizec5• 7 years ago

I have strong doubts about both those claims. Depends on what you want your car for, of course, but how do batteries of the time stack up to ICE cars in terms of range and durability?

If memory serves, until very recently, most consumer rechargable batteries would basically stop holding charge after 2 or 3 years. Was that better for bigger batteries? I don't know ... but it would suck to have to buy a new car battery every 3 years since the lifespan of most [modern] cars is much longer than that.

As for racing being a harmful distraction: maybe. Depends on the type of racing. I like racing as a driver of what-can-this-technology-possibly-do. Bleeding edge engineering that trickles down to consumer devices. Racing is great for that.

As for the article's claim that electric cars even back then were better than ICE for city driving ... in the city nothing beats a bicycle, a brisk walk, or public transit. Cars were never a good fit for cities.

whenchamenia2• 7 years ago

Racing has led the development of more economical, lighter weight, and more powerful cars that handle better and stop faster. No other development method has made such rapid progress in automotive technology.

LoSboccacc• 7 years ago

the claim is dubious. article focus on the range, which is ok-ish as long as the claim is "see! only 20 miles less" but it's like two third of ICEs, and ICE at that time had shit fuel economy.

plus we focus on range because recharging is slow, not because range is a core value of the vehicles per se. and that point stands. sure you can commute, once, but then how long is the recharge? having two vehicles because you need to leave one at the office recharging for the next day commute is going to be inefficient.

and then there's all the stuff about battery self discharge, capacity depletion and burning everything down if shaken. it's not like battery tech then was that great.

bamans• 7 years ago

Just a small correction-- Formula E doesn't swap cars anymore, they go the full race distance now, although the distance is much shorter than Formula 1, for example.

fooblitzky• 7 years ago

I wonder if any electric cars are going to get swappable battery packs? That way you could get an instant recharge, and for racing, it would make battery pack heat manageable by just swapping out the hot pack. It might even provide an advantage over ICE race cars, as fueling is often the lengthiest operation in pit stops.

tomjakubowski• 7 years ago

Tesla, for example, still doesn't have an official Nurburgring lap time because it simply isn't able to drive at racing speeds for long enough without the battery overheating and reducing power output to avoid damage

Now I'm really curious: with a limit on the Tesla's performance to keep the battery from overheating, what's the fastest time it could do?

That they don't have an official lap time for this reason strikes me as almost dishonest, since they marketed the Roadster entirely and the Model S significantly on performance. But you can't actually drive either to its limit for more than a couple minutes? Lame.

Swizec5• 7 years ago

But you can't actually drive either to its limit for more than a couple minutes? Lame.

Notice all of Tesla's marketing is about acceleration, not lap times. They beat any other car hands down on the drag strip. But cornering is just not their forte (too heavy) and driving fast for a long time is hard (too much power draw).

loeg2• 7 years ago

Nurburgring has a notoriously long lap. Fast times are measured in handfuls of minutes. It's an interesting fact that Teslas aren't race cars capable of going full out for minutes on end, but I'm not sure that's relevant to most potential customers.

WorldMaker• 7 years ago

It should be mentioned, too, that Tesla doesn't have an official Nurburgring lap time because they don't want one. They've made several official statements that they aren't interested in such competitions.

There are unofficial times [1], but Nürburgring apparently takes manufacturer wishes into respect on declaring official times.

Multiple EVs have official times at this point. Tesla doesn't seem to care right now.

(VW, on the hand, with Nürburgring in their backyard has to care, and it is fascinating to hear what's going on with their EV race teams.)

[1] An example: https://jalopnik.com/heres-what-a-tesla-model-s-can-do-aroun...

maxxxxx2• 7 years ago

A Tesla is way too heavy and soft to produce a decent lap time. They accelerate really well but fast cornering is not their forte. The Nurburgring has some very fast sections where you go top speed or near top speed for a long time. I also would have my doubts about the brakes holding up.

dripton2• 7 years ago

Here's an 8:50 lap (amateur driver) with a P85D. From 2015.

The 3 is better on the track than the S. Still heavy, of course.

agumonkey• 7 years ago

Leno steam car video was thrilling. Even with the early century crippled controls it was tempting.

ClassyJacket• 7 years ago

What do you mean steam powered cars? When I think of an X powered car I think of putting X into the car to power it. You put petrol in a petrol car and electric power in an electric car. You don't put steam in a steam train, aren't they actually coal powered? According to Wikipedia, steam cars just ran on petrol, but the combustion engine was external, and the car was less efficient overall. Steam engines don't seem to make sense for cars.

smileysteve5• 7 years ago

It's not a combustion engine, but a burner, not unlike a grill or stove. To your point they could also be electric.

The earliest ones were coal or wood burning, we're also talking 1880s

pfdietz• 7 years ago

And more importantly, the Model T was a factor of 6 cheaper than the competing steam cars.

External combustion just sucks. Heat exchangers, or indeed anything that transmits heat through solid/fluid interfaces, are not something you want if you can avoid it. The ICE has the advantage that the working fluid carries most of the waste heat away from the vehicle.

Interestingly, we're seeing the same thing play out in stationary power plants today. Gas turbines are beating steam-based power plants (coal, nuclear), because they have much lower capital cost.

loeg2• 7 years ago

My 2018 motorcycle tops out at 110mph

This is a silly point of fact. Motorcycles have been capable of achieving far greater than 110 mph for a long time; a top speed of 110mph puts your 2018 vehicle on the low end of the speed range for "motorcycle" class vehicles (as opposed to scooters, mopeds, ebikes, etc). My random 1997 low-end 600cc sportbike could exceed 130 mph when it was 15 years old.

Swizec5• 7 years ago

Exactly. ICE is/was more size- and weight- efficient than electric. We had motorcycles with the performance of normal person modern motorcycles many decades ago.

Electric power only became practical enough for motorcycles in the last few years.

durandal1• 7 years ago

My 2013 motorcycle gave me 72mph.... in first gear (yes, super sport bike are nuts).

NeedMoreTea3• 7 years ago

There were a few attempts at steam motorcycles/bicycles too - which boggles the mind a bit. Definitely not going to meet modern health and safety.

Here's one from 1860: https://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/motorcycles/a26052/186...

Ransomes, famous maker of traction engines and inventor of the powered lawnmower had a couple of patents for steam motorcycles, but I've never seen details of what they envisaged.

egypturnash• 7 years ago

Hindsight is 20/20.

oblib2• 7 years ago

Early models of Ford's Model T had adjustable carburetors to run on ethanol with gasoline as an option.

Not electric, but renewable, sustainable, and I'd assume (maybe wrongly) mostly carbon neutral.

dsfyu404ed4• 7 years ago

Everything is "carbon neutral" on a long enough time period. You can make ethanol carbon neutral on a one year time period if you want.

SmellyGeekBoy• 7 years ago

The problem with ethanol is that the most efficient plants for making it also happen to be food crops.

imtringued2• 7 years ago

No, that's not the problem. The problem is that driving tractors and producing fertilizer requires a lot of fossil fuels.

nickik3• 7 years ago

That's only an issue if you assume that farm land is a limited resource but that not really the problem in practice.

There are no fuel shortages just because you have cars that use ethanol.

I'm not a huge fan of ethanol specially not how it was handled in the political process (farm subsides) but using it in general is not a bad idea if it can compete.

nickik3• 7 years ago

I think methanol makes far more sense then ethanol. But basically you can cheaply build cars that can run on pretty much anything. It would be easy to require all cars to support everything from M10,E10 to M80,E80 without much issue.

I think 20-30 years ago cars should have started requiring cars to support all that stuff and allow competition between the different fuels and different methods of fuel production. Meaning most likely methanol from gas, ethnaol from food or gas from saudi arabia.

Methanol from natural gas could have been incredibly successful specially because natural gas export is not an easy problem. Meaning that gas prices in the US were incredibly cheap and a huge fleet of car hungry for methanol would have made it reasonable to do the conversion process. Far less methane could have been wasted into the air.

Now I feel like time has passed and EV make more sense.

Animats2• 7 years ago

* But no sudden technological breakthrough explains the automobile’s arrival in the 1890s either.*

Er, steel? Steel was about as exotic as titanium is now until the 1860s when the Bessemer process went into volume production.

maxxxxx2• 7 years ago

I think steam engines prototyped a lot of the needed technology like lubrication, manufacturing of precision shafts and heat resistance which then could be applied to the gas engine.

dsfyu404ed4• 7 years ago

We didn't have "good" machine tooling for mass production of metal parts until the 1880/1890s. The technology existed but it was all exotic and high priced because we just weren't good at making metal stuff.

jdietrich• 7 years ago

There's an interesting example of technological synergy at the dawn of the steam engine industry.

To build an effective steam engine, you need a precisely ground piston and a precisely bored cylinder, otherwise you can't get useful working pressures. Grinding the piston is laborious but straightforward - you just need two centers and a cutting tool to achieve a rotationally symmetrical part. Boring the cylinder is much more challenging, because you need to cut a very wide, very deep, very straight hole into a huge lump of iron. Cutting that hole requires a very rigid, very powerful machine.

John Wilkinson developed an effective boring machine in 1774 for making cannons, but it was limited in speed and capacity by the water wheel that powered it. The next year, the Boulton & Watt company was founded, building stationary steam engines with cylinders made by Wilkinson. Wilkinson received the second steam engine built by Boulton & Watt, which he used to power a bigger and faster cylinder boring machine, which he used to build more and bigger steam engine cylinders for Boulton & Watt.

iguy5• 7 years ago

Lubrication is, I think, and under-appreciated aspect here.

Trains got substantially more efficient circa 1850-1950, more miles-per-ton, and I believe the reason was essentially that they made hotter steam, because efficiency is bounded by the temperature difference (thanks to Carnot). And the limitation on how hot you could make steam, in any given decade, was that you needed the cylinder to still be lubricated at that temperature, and this technology slowly advanced.

I think this is one of the reasons internal combustion engines didn't appear sooner. They are necessarily quite hot, even more so for diesel, which is later (and more efficient).

masklinn• 7 years ago

And aluminum metal was effectively non-existent until the Hall-Héroult process in the mid 1880.

Literally so until 1824.

8bitsrule• 7 years ago

Related article (by Alexis Madrigal), "The Electric Taxi Company You Could Have Called in 1900" about an attempt to roll out an electric cab company in NYC and the rest of New England.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/03/the-e...

Another article which touches on the subject: https://grist.org/article/2011-03-28-alexis-madrigal-crazy-g...

"At a time when many people were stuck inside new urban confines, unable to get outside to private spaces, having a car that could tour, a car with a lot of range, was quite appealing.... And it was just sexy to go fast. People like to go fast."

todd82• 7 years ago

Perhaps we could have had electric vehicles sooner, but we would have needed clean sources of electricity, not coal powered generation, to make a difference.

Robotbeat• 7 years ago

Many of the largest early sources of electricity were, in fact, hydro power. We could've just kept building more of those until the mid 20th century when we would've pretty much maxed out the rivers (in the US).

And don't forget wind power. Could do that, too. The intermittentness handled in areas by hydro as well. Then nuclear in the mid 20th century.

9HZZRfNlpR• 7 years ago

If we talk about world, not just USA, then many places just don't have the luxury of hydro, or even wind. And often gas needs to be imported making it expensive. Coal was just cheap and effective to begin with.

rcMgD2BwE72F• 7 years ago

No, it would not have been needed because even with coal-generated electricity, EV are cleaner than ICE (because small engine are far less efficient than big power plants).

Besides, if all the car were powered by electricity, we probably would have made the electric grid cleaner and switch to renewables far sooner. Because switching from coal to gas and gas to solar/wind would have had a positive impact on almost all types of energy consumption: train, cars, heating, lightning, etc. Instead we had to invest in both the electric grid and ICE to try to make them clean, instead of just the grid.

todd82• 7 years ago

I don't believe that this is completely accurate.

According to the information found on page 7 of Cleaner Cars from Cradle to Grave, a report by the Union of Concerned Scientists [1], an electric vehicle that is charged by electricity from oil or coal generation has overall equivalent emissions to a gasoline vehicle that obtains 29 miles/gallon. Roughly on par with fuel-efficient contemporary gasoline powered vehicles. So I stand by my claim that electric cars don't solve the problem without addressing the emissions due to coal/oil based grid power.

In an alternative history, perhaps we could avoid petrochemical power, but it's not clear to me how we would have done that. Ford began production of the Model T in 1908. Solar and wind production would not have been feasible in the early 20th century, and even today hydroelectric power provides only a fraction of our energy consumption. See [2].

With regard to the original article, I find its analysis flawed. As I've already stated, power production for electric vehicles wouldn't have been clean in the early 1900's, but modern clean electric cars depend on more than a power grid based on renewable energy sources. They depend on lithium-ion batteries, invented in 1980. What would the country's electric cars have utilized before the 1980s? (Lead-acid and NiCad have serious environmental impacts, Lead-acid has poor energy vs weight, and NiMH batteries were not invented until 1989. All three of these battery types have charging rate limits that prevent them from being used in practical cars.[3])

Perhaps we could have done much better in the past with our decisions, but "masculine daring-do"[4] isn't the reason that we ended up with the levels of CO2 that we have in the atmosphere today.

[1] https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/attach/2015/11/Cl...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_States#/m...

[3] https://phys.org/news/2015-04-history-batteries.html

[4] From the original articles sub-title.

thrower123• 7 years ago

I don't think you can discount the military applications as a factor. It is not as extreme as in aviation in terms of raw innovation, but without the demand for millions of engines for trucks, tanks, jeeps, and all the other machinery of war sparked by the warfare of the first part of the 20th century, the internal combustion engine would not be as ubiquitous as it is today. In thirty years armies went from marching on oats and horseshoes to petrol and Goodyears.

Maneuver warfare would have been impossible on electric. And then when the war was over, all that surplus machinery was around, and so were the factories that built it.

m-i-l2• 7 years ago

This aligns to the timings of the switch to ICE, which appears to be between 1914 and 1917 - see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20181692 .

Johnny555• 7 years ago

Early electric cars performed better in cities than internal combustion vehicles, but didn’t give riders the same illusion of freedom and masculine derring-do

Isn't that the same reason we still don't all drive electric cars?

I was always disappointed that NEV's didn't take off, seems like a perfect solution for cities and even suburbs -- lanes could be striped much narrower and parking could be much more dense.

But few people want to drive a glorified golf cart to the office, even if they only drive 10 miles and are stuck in stop and go traffic anyway, so the 25mph NEV cap wouldn't really change their commute time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neighborhood_Electric_Vehicle

axaxs2• 7 years ago

Unpopular opinion, but I truly feel battery powered cars are a dead end. Gas won out over earlier models because of its unique properties, most of which is its easy availability and high energy density. Batteries are heavy, and range limited. A true successor to the ICE must offer the same freedoms afforded. Whether it's super fast charging, nuclear, or a greener fuel, though, I'm not sure.

LeoPanthera3• 7 years ago

The 2019 Tesla model S has a range of 370 miles, and I assume that as time passes, more EVs will have a range approaching that figure.

That range is considerably longer than the range of my bladder, so once charging increases in speed, this "problem" simply vanishes. We're already on our way there, the first 250kW charger opened this week, and will add 180 miles of range in 15 minutes.

In fact, it's better than an ICE car, because I can charge at home, and start every single journey with 100% charge.

forkandwait• 7 years ago

How long does it take to charge? Granted 350 miles is a long trip, but some 9f us drive from Seattle to San Francisco and we can't do that in 350 burst waiting overnight for the car to charge.

Personally I think a hybrid that plugs into 120, with a commuting range 50 miles and a back up gas engine will be the sweet spot

axaxs2• 7 years ago

And Monday, I have a 900 mile drive to make (true story). Compare the time it would take me in a gasoline car vs a Tesla.

jhoechtl2• 7 years ago

Unpopular but true. The future is either serial electric vehicles SEV or hydrogenium powered cars

jhoechtl2• 7 years ago

Why would we have had electric car from the beginning? Producing an E-car consumes more energy than a car with an internal combustion engine, the milage is a joke. And if electricity is coming from coal power plants it is all but green.

LeoPanthera3• 7 years ago

Producing an E-car consumes more energy than a car with an internal combustion engine,

That's true! These differences change as soon as the cars are driven. EVs are powered by electricity, which is generally a cleaner energy source than gasoline. Battery electric cars make up for their higher manufacturing emissions within eighteen months of driving — shorter range models can offset the extra emissions within 6 months. Source: https://youtu.be/K9m9WDxmSN8

the milage is a joke.

The 2019 Tesla model S has a range of 370 miles, and on new superchargers will add 180 miles of range in 15 minutes. Source: https://cleantechnica.com/2019/04/24/new-tesla-model-s-370-m...

Of course, most EV owners rarely use any charger other than their home one, since you can start every journey with 100% charge.

This might be "a joke" to you, I cannot say.

And if electricity is coming from coal power plants it is all but green.

That's also true! Lucky then that all electricity does not come from coal power plants. In the US, that's only 17.8%. Source: https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/

Those with solar panels on their homes don't get their power from any kind of power plant at all, just the sun.

adrianmonk2• 7 years ago

Early electric cars performed better in cities than internal combustion vehicles

This article talks a lot about cars around 1900.

In the US in 1900, 60% of the population lived in rural areas and only 40% lived in cities. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization_in_the_United_Sta...)

So working well in rural areas was probably a more important concern. A product that works OK for all your potential customers is better (from a business's point of view) than one that works a bit better for some customers and not at all for others.

sitkack• 7 years ago

85% of all the income was probably made in cities.

adrianmonk2• 7 years ago

Valid point. I couldn't easily find data on that, though I do think that at a certain point cars became one of those things you find a way to afford (even if you don't have a lot of money) because of how useful they are if you live in a rural area.

chrisco2552• 7 years ago

It's amusing to see people "Monday morning quarterbacking" on one of the greatest achievements of the 20th century. "We could have done it ANOTHER way!" ignores the fact that it might not have happened at all.

chadcmulligan4• 7 years ago

Some of the reasons why petrol won:

There was no electric grid to speak of - even now there is concern the grid can't support all EV's, once you were outside the cities (and there weren't many back then) the grid was spotty. The miracle of being able to pour some cheap liquid in an engine and drive for miles is a considerable achievement.

Lead acid batteries weren't very good and were expensive (and still are) and don't last long compared to petrol engines.

Electric motors were big then - it was only rare earth magnets that made them small enough to consider using in cars at high speed/ranges.

Its always been possible to make a small electric commuter car to drive round at 30mph for short distances but even today there are none like this, because people want to take their cars on the road on the weekend without having to worry. In the 1900's it was the call of the open road and cheap travel (petrol was very cheap then) that made petrol win.

fragmede• 7 years ago

Its always been possible to make a small electric commuter car to drive round at 30mph for short distances

Early models of the Nissan leaf weren't too much more than that (though there have been some advances since the invention of electricity). However, golf carts are the modern version of the small electric car - and is street legal in service jurisdictions!

(Okay, technically what's street legal isn't literally a golf cart, and is called a low speed vehicle (LSV) and will only do 25mph, and aren't always electric, but close enough!)

amelius• 7 years ago

For short distances you could use a bicycle or scooter instead.

Cars are mostly useful for larger distances, i.e. on highways, where slow vehicles are not allowed.

godelski5• 7 years ago

Another reason: Even today the energy density of batteries is SUBSTANTIALLY smaller than that of fossil fuels. [0] We frequently see this graph [1] showing how far batteries have come (they have! and we need to keep going) but not understanding this is part of the issue too. [0] is why we need to keep researching, but [0] is why electric was never going to win in the beginning. It is taking very advanced materials to get to pretty decent energy densities and also advanced materials to use electricity more efficiently. Advanced materials that would likely^ not have been invented that far back even if there was a demand.

[0] https://static.financialsense.com/historical/users/u242/imag...

[1] https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Gp_Pandey/publication/2...

^ For you hopefuls, I say likely not impossible. The machining to create these state of the art batteries requires a lot of other technologies.

raxxorrax4• 7 years ago

I still think there is a limit in chemical density that cannot be overcome without significantly changing technological principles of current batteries. Maybe hydrogen fuel cells would be a better solution after all if we can find an efficient way to contain it. Easier said than done...

hwillis8• 7 years ago

This is an incredibly myopic take masquerading as "first principles". First, you're flat wrong on the differences between gas and batteries, especially for cars. Second, you need an actual reason energy density is the fundamental metric- cars aren't rockets and weight isn't the end-all.

It's impossible to neglect the efficiency here. Car-scale combustion engines have a real world efficiency of around ten percent compared to electric. A gallon of E10 contains 34.9 kWh and randomly picking a Toyota Avalon you'll get a real world 17 mpg with that[1], which works out to 16.4 mpge.

Compare that to real world measurements of a Tesla Model 3, a car that is MUCH more powerful and heavier, but gets 147.4 mpge[2]. The Avalon gets 11% as many miles per unit of energy stored. E10 is equivalent to 1.32 kWh/kg (4.8 MJ/kg).

Not to mention that graph of battery energy density is significantly out of date. Normal li-ion, is at 300 Wh/kg (1.1 MJ/kg) and li-sulfur is commercially available at 500 Wh/kg[3] (1.8 MJ/kg). Even Tesla's batteries are above 250 Wh/kg.

So the bottom line is the difference is ~5x right now. Is that enough to matter? 15.5 gallons of gas (standard fuel tank) weighs 44 kg, or 2.7% the total weight of the Avalon. The full capacity in batteries at 250 Wh/kg would weigh 232.32 kg, or 11.4% more. As much as 2 people + luggage. That's a totally irrelevant increase in weight; luxury or performance cars in a given class can weigh DOUBLE the lightest cars in the same class.

The energy density of batteries is a red herring for all vehicles except cargo/tanker ships and long-distance airplanes. It's completely irrelevant for vehicles. The charging speed is arguably minorly important but by FAR the most important things are the upfront and lifetime cost. That is related to energy density... the energy density of the power plant's fuel, not the battery. And again, it's incredibly naive to assume the weight is the major factor in cost.

[1] https://www.fueleconomy.gov/mpg/MPG.do?action=mpgData&vehicl...

[2] https://www.fueleconomy.gov/mpg/MPG.do?action=mpgData&vehicl...

[3] https://sionpower.com/

magduf9• 7 years ago

Another reason: Even today the energy density of batteries is SUBSTANTIALLY smaller than that of fossil fuels.

That's irrelevant. The thing people keep forgetting with fossil fuels is that most of that energy is being wasted to just produce heat. With an EV, 95-98% of the battery's energy is being used for propulsion (unless you turn on a heater of course).

In short, you're comparing apples to oranges.

clouddrover5• 7 years ago

its always been possible to make a small electric commuter car to drive round at 30mph for short distances but even today there are none like this

Here's one. The Renault Twizy: https://www.renault.co.uk/vehicles/new-vehicles/twizy.html

The e.Go Life only has 100km range in the base model (the e.Go Kart looks pretty fun): https://e-go-mobile.com/en/models/e.go-life/

The Sono Sion has a small battery but plenty of solar panels: https://sonomotors.com/en/sion/

The Honda e is a nice looking city car with only 200km range: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfD67KCFxqI

The electric city car certainly exists. I wouldn't buy one but you can if you want.

avar4• 7 years ago

[...]a small electric commuter car to drive round at 30mph for short distances but even today there are none like this[...]

These are called microcars[1] and a lot of models exist. E.g. the Canta[2] (both petrol and electric models) and Biro[3] are quite popular in The Netherlands. There they're given preferential regulatory treatment, e.g. you can park them on sidewalks and drive them down bicycle paths.

The problem with a small car that can go at max 30 mph is that a moped is a much better fit for most use cases for such a car. An advantage of a car like the Canta or Biro is that they're fully covered, so you won't get wet in the rain. But you can also get good moped rain covers, and mopeds are a lot cheaper.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Microcars

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canta_(vehicle)

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estrima_Bir%C3%B2

pjc502• 7 years ago

Power control is also a massive consideration - doing more than on-off basically requires semiconductors or wasting a lot of energy in variable resistors. Some old systems had two-speed control by swapping batteries between series and parallel.

One of Tesla's less obvious innovations is going beyond silicon to silicon carbide for high-power control: https://www.systemplus.fr/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/SP18413...

Milk floats lasted a long time as ubiquitous home delivery EVs. Maybe we'll see their return.

BlueTemplar• 7 years ago

We already got them back around here, since a few years ago, mostly used by mailmen.

lagadu• 7 years ago

Its always been possible to make a small electric commuter car to drive round at 30mph for short distances but even today there are none like this

Hmmm? There are quite a few like that, off the top of my head:

- Peugeot Ion

- Smart electric

- Renault Zoe

- Mitsubishi imiev

- Fiat 500 had an EV version

- Don't remember the name but some citroen too

sokoloff3• 7 years ago

I think the poster was more thinking of the "neighborhood electric vehicle" type. I don't know all the cars on the list, but the Fiat 500 and smart electric are both normal cars that can hit 65+mph on highways with ease and have ranges over 100km.

hwillis8• 7 years ago

There was no electric grid to speak of - even now there is concern the grid can't support all EV's, once you were outside the cities (and there weren't many back then) the grid was spotty. The miracle of being able to pour some cheap liquid in an engine and drive for miles is a considerable achievement.

Not true- Pearl street switched on in 1882, the first overhead wires went up in 1883, and by 1899 there were hundreds of generating stations. Until around 1905-1910 there was no real standardization, leading to a mix of DC, polyphase, and split-phase systems since light bulbs don't care what they run on. Roughly standard split-phase pretty quickly won out and the first electrical washing machine was sold in 1907, before the first model T.

The problem is much more fundamental: you can't charge a battery on AC. Getting DC power at home was NOT easy. You needed a phase converter (an AC motor connected to a DC motor) or a mercury rectifier[1], both FAR from affordable.

Lead acid batteries weren't very good and were expensive (and still are) and don't last long compared to petrol engines.

That's just goofy. Research doesn't just happen, there has to be real interest and funding. There was no significant interest in batteries for half a century.

Electric motors were big then - it was only rare earth magnets that made them small enough to consider using in cars at high speed/ranges.

Totally wrong. Electric motors have always and will always be far more compact than combustion motors. In fact induction motors -the kind used in the Tesla Model S- have been essentially unchanged since 1889, when the first squirrel-cage motor was invented.

Its always been possible to make a small electric commuter car to drive round at 30mph for short distances but even today there are none like this, because people want to take their cars on the road on the weekend without having to worry. In the 1900's it was the call of the open road and cheap travel (petrol was very cheap then) that made petrol win.

No it wasn't. The Model T had a maximum range of 250-300 miles, and as the article says the Detroit Electric could do 240 miles. The Model T did over double the top speed and cost a fourth as much, but the speed wasn't due to technical limitations and the cost was because electric vehicles were a luxury item (the battery was a low-ish premium). Electricity and gas cost roughly the same at the time. It was all about the charging.

Efficient electricity transmission requires high voltage. High voltage requires transformers. Transformers require AC. Batteries require DC. Until it was cheap to convert AC to DC, electric cars had no chance.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q89SV_UwykQ

simonebrunozzi• 7 years ago

The problem has always been the battery.

Energy density (MegaJoule/Kilogram):

Lithium-ion battery: 0.36–0.875 MK/kg

Gasoline: 46 MJ/kg

for reference, Uranium: 80,620,000 MJ/kg

We might get parity between gasoline and electric by 2045 [0].

[0] https://cleantechnica.com/2016/05/13/ev-battery-energy-densi...

Beldur• 7 years ago

When I visited the Porsche Museum in Stuttgart, I was surprised to find out, that Porsche's first car was an Electric one :-)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porsche_P1

amai• 7 years ago

See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lohner-Porsche from 1900:

"The Lohner-Porsche's design was studied by Boeing and NASA to create the Apollo program's Lunar Roving Vehicle."

ryanmercer• 7 years ago

So I started reading popular mechanics 1905-2005 last weekend, in the first issue of 1905 they actually show a little blurb about electric mail trucks, I knew EVs went way back but found it pretty neat.

ineedasername2• 7 years ago

We Could Have Had Electric Cars from the Beginning

All true. If we ignore the massive increase in infrastructure needed to make them viable outside of cities. And also ignore, as the article does, the time it would take to charge along with the short lifetime of batteries in that era. It doesn't matter if their range equaled that of an IC, the IC could be ready for the next leg of a trip almost instantly compared to an EV. Effectively this halved the range of an EV. If you could only drive 60 miles and there was no guaranteed prospect of charging at the end, you had to be able to return home to charge, meaning 30 miles out and 30 miles back.

All issues that still represent bottlenecks to EV adoption today, albeit much less so, and which are gradually being overcome.

magduf9• 7 years ago

The range isn't really a problem: all you have to do is have "battery stations" where you swap out the batteries in a few minutes. This has its issues (related to ownership of the batteries, and also standardization), but technically it's completely doable. They've had lead-acid batteries for over a century now, so if society had wanted to make EVs the norm, this could have been done.

ineedasername2• 7 years ago

It's still an issue, requiring large infrastructure investments to build battery stations and the charging equipment. Compare this to gasoline and it's precursor mixtures which could be derived from coal, for which there already existed massive distribution infrastructure.

I think the author reads entirely too much into the supposed psychology of an IC powered vehicle instead of the much more simple explanation: path dependency.

crimsonalucard2• 7 years ago

If we replaced all cars with EV's how much greenhouse gas would we actually curb? I know we're shifting the strain of the car producing greenhouse gases tp the power plant. Anybody know the numbers?

Intuitively I always thought the only way of actually making a dent in emissions is to change the way we live by shifting to public transportation. Suburbia is what makes the US the leading greenhouse gas producers and only changing the way we live to be more like cities such as NYC or Tokyo do we actually stand to make a change. We need to reduce the usage of cars to make a meaningful dent in greenhouse gas emissions.

We Could Have Had Electric Cars from the Beginning

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