
How crooks stalled the rise of electric cars for 100 years (2017) - XnoiVeX
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23531420-600-how-crooks-stalled-the-rise-of-electric-cars-for-100-years/
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travisoneill1
> 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.

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tomatotomato37
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.

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gsich
Lead batteries don't.

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tomatotomato37
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.

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rightbyte
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.

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nixpulvis
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.

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ethbro
_> 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.

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ThomPete
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.

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eitland
> 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.

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

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eitland
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.

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brightball
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.

