Customer Reviews

The Electric Vehicle and the Burden of History

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Electric Vehicles giving way to the Internal Combustion Engine was not a given at the turn of the 20th century.

In the US, Electric Vehicles (EV) outsold the Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) significantly in 1900, and by WW2 the ICE was dominant and the last passenger EV company closed up shop. What happened? Why? Was this a foregone conclusion given what we know today?

This book examines the transportation network as it existed, and how EV's fit into it, the first book section detailing the ill-fated electric taxi monopoly (didn't fail because of the ICE, but a combination of mismanagement and poor quality) and the second talking about the foray into passenger cars. A large part of the market failure of EV's had nothing to do with the limitations of the battery technology as most people think.

Interesting to note that the ICE required both cheap fuel, and a purpose built transportation network **both didn't exist** in the early days. Through uniting the portions of the economy that feed into the cars and those that were to create its infrastructure network they managed to create a system where the ICE was to dominate. Once cheap oil was discovered in Texas, Henry Ford created the assembly line for the Model T, the stage was set for the highway building boom started in the 1920's. At that point the EV's didn't stand a chance - they had blown it by failing to achieve the level of united purpose 20 years earlier with their suppliers, the utility companies and the rest of the public infrastructure. The advantages of the ICE's technology weren't nearly the factor that we gather, since the infrastructure required to make the ICE successful was so much larger than the EV's at the time - the EV industry simply "blew it." (Though if the EV industry had succeeded we would have a very different transportation network than we do today)

We are at another crossroads - the assumptions and reasons for the ICE's dominance are under question. Petroleum prices have never been higher and promise to climb higher still, and the supply is less certain than ever given the current international situation. The combustion of oil over the last 100 years in service of transportation has created global climate change as well as severe air pollution in some metropolitan areas. We are seeing interest in electric, hybrid-electric and Fuel Cell based vehicles as possible "solutions" to these issues. Are we seeing the beginning of another period of change like the early 1900's? This book certainly offers an interesting perspective, as we challenge our infrastructure and question the decisions we have made for the last 100 years.

Very well researched, this book is a must read for public officials, EV advocates and fans, and energy and transportation professionals.

There are plenty of lessons learned here, and now we are listening the same really old centennial arguments: range anxiety, lack of recharging infrastructure, and higher cost than internal combustion engines.

Among many surprising facts, you will also learn, believe it or not, that the automobile was the environmentally-friendly solution to the unsustainable problem being suffered by big cities such as New York and London.

At the turn of the twentieth century, the prospect of a society centered on personal vehicules propulsed by internal combustion engines would have been unimaginable. It seems all the fairies were around the new miracle technology, electricity. The expectations ran very high in the general urban population. This book, through in deep research, brings clues to what really happened.
How the marvel energy was put aside by the one that we still have today, using concepts like pistons, crankshafts and generous heat, that are easier to understand. How the general population was drawn to the dream of touring, even though it was an exceptional use of the automobile.
How in the prospect of First World War the central governments gave generous subsidies for the development of the use of internal combustion engines for the truck industry.

A must read for anyone interested in the history of the electric car.