100 years ago there were more electric cars

[Wisper Bikes]

100 years ago there were more electric cars on the road than internal combustion engined vehicles. What went wrong?

If you have not seen this documentary take half an hour to watch it.

Documentary EV1 on Vimeo

All the best

David

 

[flecc]

There were indeed, and electric vans continued through the following decades and up into the 1960s, famous examples of users being Harrods and John Lewis Partnership.

What went wrong is simple, it's what is still going wrong for electric cars to be successful:

BATTERIES!

Early in the 20th century electric cars, their batteries and petrol cars were at an equal stage of development, but though the electric propulsion and petrol cars rapidly developed, batteries have crawled along behind and still do.

One only has to look at the success of electric trains, trams and trolleybuses to see it's only the battery that's to blame, since electric propulsion is obviously superb, even for aeroplane like speeds in trains.

Footnote: Nobody killed the EV1 though, it wasn't viable and GM knew it.
.

 

[dan]

100 years ago there were more electric cars on the road than internal combustion engined vehicles. What went wrong?

If you have not seen this documentary take half an hour to watch it.

Documentary EV1 on Vimeo

All the best

David

the electric starter killed the electric car...once you did not have to hand crank a car, sales of electric cars dropped off very quickly

 

[Barry Heaven]

Batteries are indeed the problem. I do believe that for electric cars necessity is the mother of invention. The necessities being peak oil and climate change requiring a decarbonisation of transport. There are many initiatives going on not only to improve Li batteries but for new technologies. Examples are the project launched by IBM to develop lithium-air batteries that could offer 10 times the energy capacity of lithium-ion batteries, albeit the technical problems are formidable. Zinc-air batteries are another possibility, not to mention the more esoteric super-capacitors being developed by the secretive EEStor (but I wouldn't bet the family silver on that one myself).

Hybrid cars probably offer the best compromise at the moment in the face of the high expense of batteries but these are likely to lead to full EVs eventually. The Better Place project is another promising initiative whereby networks of fast recharging stations are set up supported by battery swapping systems enabling smaller batteries to be used. The Renault-Nissan alliance in France and Israel are seeking this route. The Aptera car is another solution whereby a very light structure and extremely low drag coefficient combine to enable smaller batteries to be used.

Battery technology is limiting at the moment but answers to these limitations are available. What is really lacking is the will to do it.

 

[flecc]

Battery technology is limiting at the moment but answers to these limitations are available. What is really lacking is the will to do it.

I'm not as confident Barry. All these alternatives have serious intrinsic deficiencies which is why no-one wants to develop them. It's not so much lack of will so much as a realisation and understanding of those failings.
.

 

[Tiberius]

There's an old saying that the history of aircraft is really the history of aircraft engines.

It would be even more correct to say the history of electric vehicles is the history of batteries.

Nick