“No electric car since 1902, regardless of battery or drive train, had been able to compete effectively against its contemporary internal combustion counterpart.”
– David Kirsch, The Electric Vehicle and The Burden of History (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2000), p. 203.
Energy history takes the wind out of the sails of the advocates of forced energy transformation. Proponents of government- enabled renewable energies must contend with the fact that for most of mankind’s (impoverished) history, the market share of biomass, wind, solar, and falling water was 100 percent. (The carbon-based energy era is only a couple of hundred years old.)
And proponents of government-enabled electric vehicles (not golf carts) must know that their technology was beat fair and square than a century ago.
Here are some quotations on the rise and fall of EVs (or EEVs–emission elsewhere vehicles).
“Nothing fails like failure. Following the collapse of the Electric Vehicle Company, internal combustion began to assume a dominant position in the developing motor vehicle market.”
- David Kirsch, The Electric Vehicle and The Burden of History (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2000), p. 238.
“The ‘electric cab and carriage service’ described in the epigraph was inaugurated in New York City in March 1897 by Henry Morris and Pedro Salom, two Philadelphia-based engineers, with financial and logistical support from the Electric Storage Battery Company.”
David Kirsch, The Electric Vehicle and The Burden of History (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2000), p. 29.
“Electrical World [in 1898] opined that, in spite of recent improvements, the storage battery ‘will spatter, fume, give out on the road, leak, buckle, disintegrate, corrode, short-circuit and do many other undesirable things under the sever conditions of automobile work.'”
- David Kirsch, The Electric Vehicle and The Burden of History (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2000), p. 46.
“Many would-be electric drivers either bought no car at all or bought an internal combustion vehicle. As one participant in the March 1909 meeting of the Pacific Coast Electric Automobile Association observed, ‘the unwarranted promise by the daily newspapers of a 200-mile battery has proved a serious obstacle to the introduction of electric vehicles.'”
- David Kirsch, The Electric Vehicle and The Burden of History (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2000), p. 200.
“The electric vehicle of 1914 was no longer competing against a crude, unreliable, gasoline-powered horseless carriage. Rather, by 1910 the internal combustion vehicle industry had itself evolved. Leading firms such as Ford, Buick, and Studebaker were producing many thousands of vehicles each year. Numerous advances in design, technology, and manufacturing had propelled the industry forward.
As of 1914, therefore, the electric vehicle industry confronted the following dilemma: the electric vehicle of 1902 (that is, after the initial kinks had been worked out of the Exide battery) was actually more acceptable to consumers than was the electric vehicle of 1910. In absolute terms the electric vehicle of 1910 was vastly superior to the first-generation vehicles produced at the turn of the century; but relative to both expectations and the internal combustion vehicle of 1910, the passenger electric car was actually further from commercial viability than was its predecessor.”
David Kirsch, The Electric Vehicle and The Burden of History (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2000), p. 201.
“Not only were electric vehicles incapable of meeting expectations, but the success of internal combustion created a moving target. As the internal combustion bandwagon gathered momentum, the threshold for minimum required performance continued to ratchet upward, thereby solidifying public perception of the electric vehicle as a technological failure.”
- David Kirsch, The Electric Vehicle and The Burden of History (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2000), p. 203.
“No electric car since 1902, regardless of battery or drive train, had been able to compete effectively against its contemporary internal combustion counterpart.”
- David Kirsch, The Electric Vehicle and The Burden of History (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2000), p. 203.
“The Electric Vehicle Association of America (EVAA) [was] a full-fledged trade organization representing electric vehicle manufacturers, battery makers, and electric companies. During its six-year existence as an independent entity, the EVAA helped underwrite a modest resurgence of interest in the electric vehicle, especially for commercial delivery and haulage.”
David Kirsch, The Electric Vehicle and The Burden of History (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2000), p. 8.
“Early electric vehicle enthusiasts had many reasons to hope for a revolutionary breakthrough in energy storage technology; their generation had lived through the last quarter of the nineteenth century, an age of technological miracles. Initially, faith in the imminent solution to the battery problem ran high. Over time, however, hope gave way to a mixture of steadfast optimism and wistful resignation. Expectations were never fulfilled, even as incremental technological changes dramatically improved the capabilities of the typical electric vehicle.
All the while, internal combustion was consolidating its hold on the automobile market, further raising the bar for a successful electric passenger vehicle. Gradually, the electric car came to occupy a unique position; its prospects always seemed bright, even though memories were full of its history of unmet expectations.
- David Kirsch, The Electric Vehicle and The Burden of History (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2000), p. 9.
“In the late 1890s, at the dawn of the automobile era, steam, gasoline, and electric cars all competed to become the dominant automotive technology. By the early 1900s, the battle was over, and internal combustion was poised to become the prime mover of the twentieth century.”
David Kirsch, The Electric Vehicle and The Burden of History (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2000), p. 4.