How crooks stalled the rise of electric cars for 100 years (2017) | Hacker News Reader

How crooks stalled the rise of electric cars for 100 years (2017)

newscientist.com

39 pointsXnoiVeX43 comments

> Each battery weighed around 1.75 tons and could power a bus for just 60 kilometers. Charging took almost 8 hours

But clearly it was the fact that one electric bus company was run by crooks in 1906 that held back electric cars for a century.

I always thought it was crazy how all those alternative history folks think that the material & chemical sciences of the time that could barely rev an IC engine made out of the most industrialized material ever over 1000 rpm without knocking or throwing a rod could also handle batteries which today require rare-earth materials and exotic chemistries.

Yeah even today after several more decades of battery science we can just barely make an electric car economical. We still can't get one down to Camry prices.

Electric cars are really fun to drive from a sports perspective, its just a shame they have such huge carbon footprints. Singapore, who has some of best pollution regulations of any modern state, has rated electric cars as "super polluter" status.

> Singapore, who has some of best pollution regulations of any modern state, has rated electric cars as "super polluter" status.

Because they measure CO2 emission at the electrical generation point.

Not Tesla's fault Singapore plants are almost 100% natural gas.

https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/transport/electric-ca...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Singap...

Though in the future there are plans to run a cable to solar panels in Australia. (Slightly surprisingly - you'd think Malaysia was closer and sunny enough). https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jul/14/just-a-m...

Lead batteries don't.

The biggest andvantage for lead batteries is probably that you don't need cell balancing which would have been really hard at that time. You just overcharge all cells and call it a day. Really nice batteries from a robustness perspective.

To a 1910 industrialist acid batteries were exotic chemistry. Don't forget IC cars were hand-cranked during this time, and magnetos for spark plugs only came into commercial availablity 4 years before this article is based. It took another decade for starter motors and auxiliary electronics to make their way into IC automobiles.

Basic commericially avaliable electronics were cutting-edge back then.

The gasoline engine was probably equally exotic.

Sulfuric acid has been manufactured since to 18th century. And you don't need permanent magnets to make a DC motor. And electrical motors were even used to power vehicles before Otto constructed his gasoline engine.

I guess heat engines just were something people were more used to? Going from steam to gasoline seems like a smaller step.

The assertion that this is "crazy" and "alternative history" because it makes claims it never made is not even wrong.

Out of the most popular battery chemistries only NiMH, requires rare-earths - specifically Lanthanum, which is also used as a catalyst in... oil refining.

While I almost definitely agree that it's a bit far fetched to imagine the batteries and bus electric engines we're truly good enough 100 years ago... I do know that crooks in the oil / transportation industries have set us back X years, where X is unacceptably large.

But don't get me started, the whole suburbanization of America and the rise of cars and cheap gas are foundational to a lot of the problems we are facing today.

> the whole suburbanization of America and the rise of cars and cheap gas are foundational to a lot of the problems we are facing today

On the other hand, we've generally had riots and/or public health crises whenever we've crammed too many people into cities.

So from a 1950s perspective, it was a reasonable decision.

Hindsight is 20/20.

Clickbaity and completely misleading headline.

The reason why the electric car didn't win was that it wasn't practical and still to this day isn't close to being as practical as using the combustion engine.

> Clickbaity and completely misleading headline.

Probably right.

> and still to this day isn't close to being as practical as using the combustion engine.

Wrong. A lot of people prefer Tesla today. Their cars are very much close to being as practical as the ones using combustion engines.

"A lot of people" would have to be > 50% of the driving population for that to be the case.

Excuse me I believe you've mistaken "a lot" with "a majority".

There are clearly still trade offs, but even ignoring the environmental benefits, the cost of fuel is much less, and for many people charging in the garage meets their needs on a daily basis. The gas stations are in many ways a redundant fuel network. And electric vehicles can still be very powerful and fun.

No, Eitland did.

How?

Edit: still no good answer to what I did wrong :-/

Only as a second vehicle for daily driving because it’s still a huge headache to take one on a longer trip.

People regularily cross the country with these. My neigbour uses his Kona to cross the mountain to the west coast so it isn't limited to only the most expensive Tesla models either.

Possible and practical are very different things. It’s taken a lot of innovation just to get the charge time inside of an hour.

That’s not practical when everybody on the highway is driving them.

Yea this article made me a little sad. First of all, it's potentially interesting history, but told without enough detail (to be expected I suppose), and b) no facts from the current state of the art. How can something be set back by 100 years if we don't have a now to reference?

Do they, or is that just the hype?

https://www.thedrive.com/tech/29162/tesla-execs-claim-servic...

My internal combustion car gets 500+ miles of range on a 5 minute charge (fillup). It does that with 5 year old storage (gas tank). It does this at 5 degrees in the winter.

Can any electric vehicle match that?

If your use case is southern California urban driving - sure.

Can you fill up your car every night at home without going to a smelly, carcinogenic gas station?

I don't know about you, but I only go to safe gas stations.

I don't have to have my car tied to my house with a short leash, and don't have to have a 220 line run to my garage. Speaking of which, what if you don't have a place to charge at night?

My 500 mile range is not a best case range. It's the expected range. The ranges advertised by the EVs are for ideal conditions (new batteries, good temperature, etc). I don't live such an ideal life.

"safe gas stations" sounds a bit like "clean coal" in this context.

Safety isn't the primary issue at play here. Both batteries and gasoline are energy storage mediums and come with some level of unsafety (Not to mention moving > 60MPH on highways is intrinsically unsafe).

I'll argue burning oil is not safe for our environment!

The metric we're all arguing over is practicality, and appeal which are highly subjective.

The incumbent solution (ICE) gets 500 miles of range on a 5 minute charge with 5 year old storage, when it is 5 degrees F. You can wave your "subjective" wand and dismiss this, but new solutions are always compared to the current one.

Here's an example of what happens when the reality of the insufficient range of a Tesla kicks in:

https://jalopnik.com/german-environmental-minister-returned-...

I think it would be great if EVs would be successful, but don't tell me they're equivalent when they are not. By the time my ICE is down to the range of an EV, it's time for me to fill up again. The short range of the EVs is just unacceptable.

I'd be totally willing to buy an equivalent EV, but the current crop of them are not equivalent, and they cost a lot more.

A lot of people prefer tesla but not for that reason.

In the long run electric will be more practical. We're at the point where normal, day to day range is acceptable for a majority of drivers. But the practicality electric has over ICE is that maintenance is practically nothing compared to it's counterpart. Also electrics (drivetrain) will outlast even diesel due to simplicity and inherent lack of wear parts.

Will they? Or, will it be like John Deere tractors that only the vendor will be allowed to fix?

https://www.thedrive.com/tech/29162/tesla-execs-claim-servic...

Teslas are already like this. One of the myrid reasons I would not own one.

Even if that became the case, it wasn't the reason why combustion engines took over.

How much less maintainance is it really? The electrical motor doesn't need much maintainance, but the rest of the vehicle is pretty much the same?

You still have brakes, driveshafts and what not. The vehicles I have had sucumbed due to body rust not engine wear.

I mean.......look, I was against electric cars for a looong time. I currently drive a Mercedes AMG and would consider myself a "petrolhead". Few years ago a car that didn't have a raspy exhaust just wouldn't make my list at all.

But nowadays.....I can't deny that the Tesla Model 3 is a very attractive proposition. 330 miles range on a single charge? 4.4s to 60? That's more range than my AMG(I'll do ~200 miles on a tank if I'm good), and 0-60 time is nearly as good, I'm sure it's good enough to always be first at the traffic lights anyways. And finally driving it daily will cost me nearly nothing - with 99 octane petrol being something like ~$8/US Gallon switching to an electric car looks more and more appealing every day, and I think I'll take the bait next year once my PCP runs out and I need a different car. As much as I love the craziness of a good old petrol powered AMG madness, the benefits of an electric car are undeniable. And 330 miles range is enough to drive it all week without charging daily, or drive down to London on a single charge if I fancy, or it I want to visit my family in Europe I can easily charge it at superchargers across the Autobahn - really I think my range anxiety is none existent at this point.

Reading this I suspect you are not the typical audience for anything transportation related.

....how so? I read a lot of different car magazines, motoring-related websites, I'd say I'm quite engaged with the topic. If I am not the audience for motoring news, then who is?

'typical'. Most people use their cars to get from 'a' to 'b', yes, you're quite engaged with the topic. But AMG drivers are typically not your average car consumer.

Transportations or hot rods? I personally like trains, and bikes.

Have you seen the Tesla autonomous car day and Elon on his robotaxi proposition?

If Tesla delivers a fully self driving car within 5 years. As a Tesla owner you could earn $30.000 a year extra on side when you put your car during lost parking hours in the Tesla fleet.

I really like Elons analogy comparing normal cars with a horse in this situation.

Even if this only has a probability of 20% to succeed this is a game changing opportunity for all car owners for effectively free.

Do you consider this in your evaluation of a next AMG?

No, because I have literally less than zero trust that Tesla will actually deliver a truly driverless car. It's just not happening, not in 10, not in 20 and not in 30 years either. I do however want a fully adaptive cruise control with lane keeping, and having tried the Deimler solution I'd be perfectly happy with it, it works fantastically well, and it is an option on any AMG on the market. The main benefit of a Tesla for me is 1) cheap cost of ownership 2) decent performance 3) gadgets like being able to pre-cool or pre-warm my car before getting in, you can't get this on a petrol Merc in the EU.

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