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The 100 Year Old Electric Car

popularmechanics.com

34 pointsDavidWanjiru17 comments

Bill Lear tried to build a steam engine to win the Indy 500 in the late sixties but failed. It was called the Vapordyne and I can remember it excited a lot of peoples imagination at the time.

http://modernsteampower.wordpress.com/2012/08/24/lear-vapord...

Really curious why someone hasn't used today's tech to reinvent the steam powered car. Or a small steam engine to power an electric hybrid, it would use a tiny fraction of the fuel of a Prius.

Here's a site with pictures of more than 50 (!!) early electric cars:

http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/overview-of-early-electric-ca...

I actually submitted this hoping it'd already been submitted and discussed and HN would redirect me to the thread, but it turns out it hadn't been submitted. I'd searched to no avail. Anyway.

If they had a working electric car in 1909, I have no idea what to think. Because there's so much to think:

How different would the world have turned out if vehicles powered with electricity, rather than gasoline, had become the main mode of 20th century transport.

How differently the development of and investment in electricity generation and transmission would have developed if the point above were true.

*How much better off the world would be today, in terms of environmental pollution.

I'd love for somebody to burst this bubble for me, coz the idea that we had a working, production electric car in 1909 but still somehow fucked it up is depressing for me.

The popularity of the automobile was staked on price. Gasoline engines are what made cars cheap enough for average people to buy them. Otherwise, they'd have just stayed toys for rich people, and equipment for businesses.

The Baker Electric and the Model T had about the same price during their first year of production ($800ish). The Model T went down in price only with scale and manufacturing innovations during that time period.

However, a Model T is quite a bit more complex to manufacture than a Baker Electric. What you are thinking of is probably the reason for why IC cars won over steam cars.

Though the electric car existed it was never a contender for a mass adoption because of the same reasons why electric cars today aren't quite as good either, range and time to refuel.

I probably feel the way I do because I have the benefit of hindsight, whereas the people of the time the Model T came out couldn't see what a future built on oil meant geopolitically and environmentally.

But for those of us alive today to look back and read that once upon a time, humanity chose oil and it's attendant conveniences when they could have taken electricity with a few limitations...

I mean, if we were the ones making the choice for 1909 people in a time travel world, I want to imagine we'd go hell for leather getting them to "vote" electric car.

I imagine 1909-era battery technology might have been a stumbling block. Gasoline is incredibly energy-dense and while it's true that infrastructure to create it in the first place is huge, once gas is pumped into a car tank it is difficult to beat.

Create and transport. Electricity can be moved at zero cost once the infrastructure is in place. If we could get 100 mile range from batteries back in 1909, I wonder how far we were from reaching today's standards.

They could do 100 miles a hundred years ago with a car with basically no capacity, and no safety features. Incredible progress has been made since then, but nearly all of it has been eaten up by expansion in other performance parameters, all of which require more weight.

This even applies to ICs. Modern engines are actually marvels. If you stuck them into late 70s imports, you would get truly astonishing mileage. Just no A/C, minimal leg room, and no crumple zone.

And a top speed of 25 mph.

The first car to wear the name Porsche was an electric car in 1898: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lohner-Porsche

It also had 4 wheel drive with the motors in the wheel hubs. However it was also prohibitively expensive. (Roughly $94,930.99 in today's dollars)

That's about what they cost now. Sounds like the "Porsche" is a more stable denominator of value than anything else, including gold.

Is the torque figure for the Doble Steamer correct? 1000 lb-ft is quite a bit more than the 687 in Tesla's top performance model. That car would fly like a rocket.

Steam power has ridiculous torque. It's like electrical in that the maximum power is available at 0 rpm.

The Baker Electric is the car that Grandma Duck drives. I remember being surprised as a teenager many years ago when I discovered that there actually had been a car that looked like Grandma Duck's car.

http://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GCXP5M_grandma-ducks-car

For those interested in this topic in the DC area, a couple of these are currently on display at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.

http://americanhistory.si.edu/press/releases/100-years-perso...

OT: Is anyone else unable to zoom in Chrome on that page? The rest of Popular Mechanics' site works well, but for some reason CTRL+/-, CTRL+Scroll, or Zoom through the settings menu is completely locked.

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