SHOPSMART AUTOS – CUSTOMER INFORMATION – JUNE 14, 2021 (PT.1)
Gasoline vs Electric Cars: Not Much Has Changed in 100 Years
We all know the adage about those who refuse to learn from history—and it seems we learned nothing from the earliest days of electric cars. Go back through the history of the great gas-vs.-electric battle, and you will likely be amazed at the similarities between then and now: Range anxiety, quick charging, electrics as chariots of the elite, Elon Musk as the electric car’s Messiah, even Tesla’s well-publicized battery fires and Ford’s promising new EV—the whole pantomime played out more than 100 years ago, almost exactly as we’re seeing it today.
Who Built the First Electric Car?
Electric cars date back to the dawn of the electric motor, when Hungarian inventor Ányos Jedlik fitted his “lightning-magnetic self-rotor” of 1827 to a toy car. But it wasn’t until the 1880s that EVs really started to gain traction. Credit the electric trolley: Its speed gave many people their first taste of rapid transit, while large crowds on the cars spurred interest in personal transport. The primary beneficiary was the newly developed safety bicycle, but much of the technology developed for trolley cars—motors, control systems, and batteries—could also be adapted to smaller vehicles. Despite the fact early electric cars outperformed their internal-combustion competitors, Thomas Edison was seriously impressed by Henry Ford’s gasoline-powered Quadricycle of 1894. “Young man, that’s the thing,” he supposedly told Ford. “Electric cars must be kept near to power stations. The storage battery is too heavy. Steam cars won’t do, either, for they have to have a boiler and a fire. Your car is self-contained—carries its own power plant—no fire, no boiler, no smoke, and no steam. You have the thing. Keep at it.”
One of the First Electric Vehicles: theElectrobat
At the time, the state of the art in terms of electric vehicles was represented by the Electrobat, developed by Philadelphian chemist Pedro Salom and mechanical engineer Henry Morris. The Electrobat I could reach 15 mph—5 mph slower than Ford’s Quadricycle—and travel 50-100 miles on a single charge. Later Electrobats cut weight and added speed at the expense of range.
What were the Disadvantages of Electric Cars?
Just as Edison immediately saw the advantage of the gasoline car, Salom zeroed in on its downsides. “All the gasoline motors we have seen,” he said in a presentation to the Franklin Institute, “belch forth from their exhaust pipe a continuous stream of partially unconsumed hydrocarbons in the form of a thin smoke with a highly noxious odor. Imagine thousands of such vehicles on the streets, each offering up its column of smell.” He cited the complexity of the gasoline car, which made it difficult to drive and prone to breakdowns. “It would be absolutely essential to have a skillful engineer and machinist to operate them,” he said. “Whereas, on an electric vehicle, we can take a boy 12 or 14 years of age, or a young lady accustomed to driving a horse, and, with 10 minutes’ practice, they can operate the vehicle perfectly.” Even Edison, despite his praise for Ford, realized the shortcomings of gasoline cars made electricity a better choice.
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