Why We Need Electric Cars
(Page 3 of 7)
October/November 2006
By Steve Heckeroth
Inventors first started tinkering with small EVs right after the invention of the electric motor in 1833. But it wasn’t until 1859 that the first rechargeable lead-acid battery made it possible for electric vehicles to be more than a novelty. In 1890, the first golden age of EVs started in Des Moines, Iowa, with William Morrison’s electric car. For the next two decades manufacturers such as General Motors (GM), General Electric, Studebaker, Baker and others raced to create a successor to the horse as the preferred mode of transportation.
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At the turn of the century, quiet, clean electric cars out-sold loud, smoke-belching gas cars and were assumed by most to be the way of the future. In 1900, Thomas Edison started work on a new alkaline battery, and by 1909 he was manufacturing nickel iron cells that had almost double the power-to-weight ratio of the lead-acid batteries of the day. Meanwhile, a prerequisite for driving Ford’s gas-powered Model T was the strength to turn the crank to start the engine. It took the invention of the electric starter in 1912 to convince “respectable people” that the elegant silence of EVs was worth giving up for the longer range of gas cars.
Electric street cars and light rail continued to develop as a clean and efficient way to get around until the Great Depression. In the 1920s the oil, auto and tire industries became the most powerful business interests on Earth. In the late ’20s GM, Standard Oil and Firestone lobbied federal and local governments to eliminate public funding for electric rail projects, and supported funding of road building projects. By 1940, this gasoline alliance had succeeded in shifting the emphasis to private transportation. Never mind that rail can be hundreds of times more efficient than idle traffic on the freeway. From a pure profit point of view, this was an effective way of eliminating competition. From a social point of view, it was a sea change that triggered suburban sprawl and a lifestyle that led to our oil addiction.
When the oil embargo hit in 1973, the writing was on the wall. It seemed a national effort to improve battery technology and switch to renewable energy would be the rational next step. After all, domestic oil production had peaked in 1970. Worse yet, a foreign cartel controlled 80 percent of world oil reserves and was becoming a force to be reckoned with. About a dozen new EV manufacturers in the United States and Europe went into limited production, mostly for commercial delivery use.
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