We Could Have Had Electric Cars from the Beginning
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We Could Have Had Electric Cars from the Beginning
1–10 of 271 posts
Re: We Could Have Had Electric Cars from the Beginning
#2Battery technology has been, and to a certain degree still is the limiting factor for electric cars...and the fact is that gasoline is still a denser form of energy storage than batteries by volume, weight etc..
I'm saying this as a someone who prefers electrics over ICE...
Re: We Could Have Had Electric Cars from the Beginning
#3They could've worked in cities. Lead-acid batteries, though, have never had the energy/weight ratio necessary for the type of long-range driving necessary outside of highly urbanized areas.
Re: We Could Have Had Electric Cars from the Beginning
#4You can visit Thomas Edison's house with his lab near Newark NJ. There are two electric cars on display. Interestingly here it says in 1914 38% of all the cars on the road were electric; 22% gasoline, 40% steam powered.
Re: We Could Have Had Electric Cars from the Beginning
#5We also could have had steam powered cars. Jay Leno once said that he got pulled over on the freeway for breaking the speed limit in his Stanley Steamer from 1906-ish. Darn thing has a top speed of 127mph.
My 2018 motorcycle tops out at 110mph, to give you a comparison.
Why don't we have steam cars?
Because in the early 1900's steam cars they couldn't compete with the elegance of ICE vehicles. The engines were big and heavy, the fuel was hard to manage, they took a long time to warm up, etc etc. The internal combustion engine was just a way better tool for the job.
Same reason electric cars didn't win: The ICE was just a way better tool for the job at the time. This is now changing, but very slowly.
Tesla, for example, still doesn't have an official Nurburgring lap time because it simply isn't able to drive at racing speeds for long enough without the battery overheating and reducing power output to avoid damage. Yes racing electric cars exist and they're awesome, but even Formula E swaps cars in the middle of the race because a single car can't last long enough.[1]
It does look like VW's electric supercar currently attacking the Nurburgring lap record. Already holds the absolute record for Pikes Peak. Exciting times we live in :)[2]
[1] https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-time-clocked-in-by-Tesla-M...
[2]https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/05/vws-record-breaking-ele...
Re: We Could Have Had Electric Cars from the Beginning
#6Battery technology has been, and to a certain degree still is the limiting factor for electric cars...and the fact is that gasoline is still a denser form of energy storage than batteries by volume, weight etc.. I'm saying this as a someone who prefers electrics over ICE...
Nuclear is denser than gasoline but we don't run cars on it. There's a lot more to the discussion than the best technology.
Re: We Could Have Had Electric Cars from the Beginning
#7We also could have had steam powered cars. Jay Leno once said that he got pulled over on the freeway for breaking the speed limit in his Stanley Steamer from 1906-ish. Darn thing has a top speed of 127mph. My 2018 motorcycle tops out at 110mph, to give you a comparison. Why don't we have steam cars? Because in the early 1900's steam cars they couldn't compete with the elegance of ICE vehicles. The engines were big an…
Isn't the whole point of the article that ICE was not way better and racing is a harmful distraction?
Re: We Could Have Had Electric Cars from the Beginning
#8We also could have had steam powered cars. Jay Leno once said that he got pulled over on the freeway for breaking the speed limit in his Stanley Steamer from 1906-ish. Darn thing has a top speed of 127mph. My 2018 motorcycle tops out at 110mph, to give you a comparison. Why don't we have steam cars? Because in the early 1900's steam cars they couldn't compete with the elegance of ICE vehicles. The engines were big an…
Just a small correction-- Formula E doesn't swap cars anymore, they go the full race distance now, although the distance is much shorter than Formula 1, for example.
Re: We Could Have Had Electric Cars from the Beginning
#9We also could have had steam powered cars. Jay Leno once said that he got pulled over on the freeway for breaking the speed limit in his Stanley Steamer from 1906-ish. Darn thing has a top speed of 127mph. My 2018 motorcycle tops out at 110mph, to give you a comparison. Why don't we have steam cars? Because in the early 1900's steam cars they couldn't compete with the elegance of ICE vehicles. The engines were big an…
> Tesla, for example, still doesn't have an official Nurburgring lap time because it simply isn't able to drive at racing speeds for long enough without the battery overheating and reducing power output to avoid damage
Now I'm really curious: with a limit on the Tesla's performance to keep the battery from overheating, what's the fastest time it could do?
That they don't have an official lap time for this reason strikes me as almost dishonest, since they marketed the Roadster entirely and the Model S significantly on performance. But you can't actually drive either to its limit for more than a couple minutes? Lame.
Re: We Could Have Had Electric Cars from the Beginning
#10Battery technology has been, and to a certain degree still is the limiting factor for electric cars...and the fact is that gasoline is still a denser form of energy storage than batteries by volume, weight etc.. I'm saying this as a someone who prefers electrics over ICE...
Nuclear is denser than gasoline but we don't run cars on it. There's a lot more to the discussion than the best technology.
There are other issues with nuclear that made it not the best technology. https://www.autoblog.com/2014/07/17/nuclear-powered-atomic-a...
Like I said before. I am a big fan of electrics. Currently drive a Volt and plan on getting a Tesla eventually, but am not blind to it's faults.
If we were talking about what lead to using leaded gasoline there is a different argument because that could have been avoided.
Given the lower population density and the fact that in the early 1900's a large percentage of the population did not have electricity to charge the batteries.. when you factor that in with the other issues of electric cars vs ICE I can see why electric cars did not take hold at that time.