I'm saying this as a someone who prefers electrics over ICE...
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...
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).
Edit: since you mention a ship, some use large opposed-pistol Diesel engines (two oppositely meeting pistons around the combustion chamber per cylinder which also allows the cylinder to be much wider)... don’t see these in either planes or cars... Hydrogen power?—- Hydrogen is difficult to keep contained because it escapes through anything over time unless we put heavy ceramic tanks in our cars.
Wankels go in Mazdas.
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)
IIRC the main reason for diesel-electric locomotives for trains and large ships was that it was significantly more efficient than just steam, at least steam with just a boiler and pistons.
Of course, really large ships generate steam and then run it through a steam turbine -- no Diesel around.
To take advantage of the increased efficient of an internal combustion engine you'd need a lot of mechanical complexity unless you go hydraulic (solidly defeating most efficiency improvements) or electric.
No this is not true, see other comments / Carnot cycle. Steam can be extremely efficient. But diesel engines are much simpler and more compact, it's a trade-off.
An alternative would be to make hybrids. Use an electric motor to get reasonable acceleration and a smaller steam engine for cruising distance.
How can this be true?
Heat engine efficiency is reliant on temperature differential.
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.,
Maybe a global electric car industry working on the problem 4x longer than we have would have come up with something better, maybe not. Alternate time lines are never certain. :)
Batteries aren't all of it though - how would personal transportation have evolved if every city and road network had electric distribution points for vehicles - as was planned in the 1910s - instead of filling out with petrol stations? The fast charger networks could easily have been something of the 1940s rather than the 2000's. We'd undoubtedly have standardised on a generic one that worked with every make of car by now. We'd probably have designed cities a little differently too.
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.
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.
This is not how it works in reality. Last 5-10% is essentially trickle charge so it is better to skip it and charge more often but faster.
Just compare average charging power between 20-80% part of the curve and 80%-100%. It is ~4-6x difference depending on supercharger type:
https://cleantechnica.com/2019/03/08/supercharger-v3-shockin...
Edit: I checked and the longest, indivisible hop in my route is 180 miles.
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.
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.
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.
but there are a lot of reasons why it never made it into production.
cue the anti-nuclear power comments
[0]: https://qz.com/568450/fossil-fuels-kill-more-people-every-ye...
[1]: http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-pro...
Because that's how many people coal kills. And Im not talking about global warming. I am instead only talking about the pollution deaths.
If Chernobyl happened like 3 times every single year, that would still be safer than coal, TBH.
More like 300, assuming 4000 (as per the IAEA) deaths from Chernobyl.
A nuclear vehicle would be impractical due to waste and risk.
There were levels of vehicle use that were perfectly acceptable. But now that transportation is a world wide commodity instead of a luxury those effects are inescapable.
So there was some point in time where the balance shifted, and then it took a long time for the reality to set in (and some part of the world are still in denial). And it will take some time still to shift to electrical vehicles, but those too have their own waste and risks, some of which will only become apparent when their adoption rate crosses certain thresholds.
Crystal balls are in short supply.
No crystal ball needed.
Globally the biggest source of emissions is energy production which represents about 35% (25% of direct emissions and 10% of processes like refining fuel).
https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emiss...
So, I doubt emissions from ICE cars would be as bad as widespread nuclear residues from nuclear cars.
Gates interview on energy
Yeah, energy production, storage, and consumption is really the fundamental problem to solve.
For example Vlacav Smil has said many times that the US should invest heavily in home insulation to reduce heating and AC energy.
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)
I wouldn't be surprised if, had we gone down that path, automobiles had less fissile material in them than platinum. Currently fissile materials and high explosives are purchasable, we just keep an eye on purchases and follow up on suspicious buying patterns.
'Practicality of a thorium-powered, superheated-steam car?' https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/69576/prac...