01 Historical Background
1750-1850 ELECTRIC, STEAM, OR GAS CARS? Which won the mass market and why.
The short answer is the Gas-Fueled - Internal Combustion Engine “ICE” Car. It was being mass-produced by Henry Ford in 1908 and the fuel was easier and faster to distribute and obtain.
The longer answer follows.
During the onset of the industrial era in the late 17th and early 18th Centuries there were a number of different attempts to replace the horse and carriage with mechanical transport, but in the early years they were all constrained by the poor condition of the roads outside of towns. This meant that they were produced in limited numbers and there was little public awareness of them.
French Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot as early, as 1769 had built one of the first steam-powered automobiles for people[1]. In 1794 Robert Street patented an internal combustion engine, which was one of the first to use liquid petroleum. By the 1870s four and two stroke cycle engines were patented and by the 1890 the compression ignition engine was developed. This breakthrough enabled the evolution of the modern internal combustion engine (ICE)[2].
Although today EVs are considered a new technology, the reality is that people have been researching and making working prototypes models[3] of them as far back as the late 1820s[4]. This first interest was a good 55-60 years before the so-called War of the Currents [5] between Thomas Edison's DC current and Nikola Tesla AC current. From 1878-1882 some of the very first DC power generating stations were being opened both in Europe and the US [6]. By 1891in Deptford[7], UK by the London Electric Supply Corporation. In 1896 Westinghouse and the Niagara Falls Power Company [8] AC power had proven its superiority to DC power mostly due to the fact that it could easily and reliably be converted to higher of lower voltages with the use of transformers. The interest in EVs dates even earlier than discussion about the electrification of towns across Europe and America. So EVs have been a contender in the automobile market for a long time.
Electric automobiles were easy to use, quiet and non pollutant. This made them popular among[9] the rich and well-to-do women[10]. They contrasted favourably with the often hard-to-start, noisy and polluting internal combustion engines[11]. They also competed well against steam road engines[12] which could take up to an hour to heat up and get going[13]. Electric automobiles were easy to use, quiet and non pollutant. This made them popular among[14] the rich and well-to-do women[15]. They contrasted favourably with the often hard-to-start, noisy and polluting internal combustion engines[16]. They also competed well against steam road engines[17] which could take up to an hour to heat up and get going[18].
Because Clara Bryant Ford refused to drive gasoline powered cars[19] her husband Henry Ford bought her a new Detroit Electric every couple of years from 1908 to 1914. Clara used a Detroit Electric into the 1930’s[20].
The early competitive advantages of EVs were diminished by the early 20C. Just as 100 years later Elon Musk and Tesla’s forward thinking are pushing new boundaries in the car industry for the 21Century, [Teslas first production line is housed in a re fitted Ex General Motors factory in Fremont California along with its acquired component manufacturing factories like the Seat factory just 2.5Miles (4Km)[21] away. Tesla has backward vertically integrated[22] many such components of its electric cars. From the production of the battery cells / packs and there cooling systems, the electric motors, the self driving algorithms run on a powerful custom built processor and central control system. These combined with new, optimised and advanced construction techniques such as the use of the Giga Press for the cars frame, a new wiring systems and car/battery pack cooling/heating systems have all led to a much faster build, much safer and stronger cars] so in 1908 did Henry Ford’s ingenuity[23] with the Ford T Model, push the innovations that lead to ICE’s market domination throughout the 20thCentury.
When Henry Ford introduced Vertical Integration and other innovations in his production lines in Michigan he marked the beginning of the end of the Evs. With the standardisation of and vertical in-house production of parts, ICE vehicles became easier and cheaper to build than Evs. Something that if the Ev producers had done we could have had a much different present. Some of Henry Fords innovations included[23], large production plants, the assembly line and in-house component manufacture. He made standardized and interchangeable parts a priority. His cars were both much faster and easier to fill than EVs and as filling stations proliferated cars also had a longer range. These advantages coupled with the discovery of large oil deposits world wide and better roads made it very hard for EVs to compete. The problem for the EVs back in the late 1800 to early 1900 was that electricity as a form of energy was still very new “in its infancy”, people were still trying to learn and understand how to use it. Storring it was and is a whole different problem. You can't just put electricity into a container, even a specially celled & compressed one as for CNG or LPG. Electricity because its electrons, needs molecules and some sort of matter to store it in and not just a container. At the end of the day the technology and knowledge of the day favored the production of the ICE cars rather than the EVs.
General Motors (GM). was one of the very few car companies who persisted with the idea of EVs[24]. GM first mass produced EVs in 1912 with the production of 682 Electric Trucks. In the 1960’s when global concerns about pollution and environmental damage became widespread, GM introduced their ‘Electrovair’. When battery technologies considerably improved, GM introduced their “Impact”. After a lot of modification and development the ‘Impact” evolved into one of the first modern mass produced Electric Vehicles the GM''EV1 ``.
Only when battery power developed very much further could EVs come back onto the scene.