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Comment by jakeonthemove | Hacker News Reader

I just can't help but think that Nikola Tesla was right - he had the same idea (and possibly the means to do it) a full century ago...

We'd also be driving electric cars today if not for the oil and auto industries (read up on how they buried the electric transportation in its infancy)...

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Electric cars are barely practical with all the 21st century technology we can muster, and still come with some fairly enormous asterisks. I don't think over a century would have gone by without anybody noticing that the internal combustion engine was a great deal more practical. To the extent the oil industry buried the electric car, it was wasted effort. It would have buried itself.

citation needed

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Killed_the_Electric_Car%3F

http://books.google.be/books?id=MyZo7EhN8-MC&pg=PA58&...

http://earlyelectric.com/carcompanies.html

http://www.wired.com/autopia/2010/06/henry-ford-thomas-ediso...

Granted, it was cheaper to go with oil-powered cars because of the incentives, but in the long run, we would've been better off with electric.

Oh well, more opportunities for innovative business today :-)

I think you missed the part where battery technology one century ago wasn't as advanced as it is today.

Copper was much cheaper, though!

Not to mention demand and continued production drives research and improvement, so it would have been self reinforcing.

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