1920s To 1980s: Gasoline Dominates
After enjoying success at the beginning of the century, the electric car began to lose its position in the automobile market. This was brought about by a number of developments. By the 1920s, improved road infrastructure was being created between American cities; in order to make use of these roads, vehicles with greater range than that offered by electric cars were needed. The discovery of large reserves of petroleum in Texas, Oklahoma, and California led to the wide availability of affordable gasoline, making gas-powered cars cheaper to operate over long distances. Electric cars were limited to urban use by their slow speed (no more than 24–32 km/h or 15–20 mph) and low range (30–40 miles or 50–65 km), and gasoline cars were now able to travel farther and faster than equivalent electrics. Gasoline cars became ever easier to operate thanks to the invention of the electric starter by Charles Kettering in 1912, which eliminated the need of a hand crank for starting a gasoline engine, and the noise emitted by ICE cars became more bearable thanks to the use of the muffler, which had been invented by Hiram Percy Maxim in 1897. Finally, the initiation of mass production of gas-powered vehicles by Henry Ford brought the price as low $440 in 1915 (equivalent to roughly $10,000 today), and $360 by 1916 (roughly $7,700 today). By contrast, the price of similar electric vehicles continued to rise; in 1912, an electric roadster sold for $1,750 (roughly $42,000 in today), while a gasoline car sold for less than half of that, $650 (roughly $16,000 today).
Studebaker electric cars were sold until the sales peak reached in 1912; Ryker, Morrison, Anthony Electric, and the Electric Carriage and Wagon Company of Philadelphia, all continued to sell their cars until 1914. Electric vehicles became popular for certain applications where their limited range did not pose major problems. Forklift trucks were electrically powered when they were introduced by Yale in 1923. In Europe, especially the United Kingdom, milk floats were historically powered by electricity. Electric golf carts were produced by Lektro as early as 1954. By the 1920s, the heyday of electric cars had passed, and a decade later, the American electric automobile industry had effectively disappeared. A thorough examination into the social and technological reasons for the failure of electric cars was discussed by author Michael Brian in his book Taking Charge: The Electric Automobile in America.
Years passed without a major revival in the use of electric cars. Fuel-starved European countries fighting in World War II experimented with electric cars, such as the British milk floats, but overall, while ICE development progressed at a brisk pace, electric vehicle technology stagnated. In the late 1950s, Henney Coachworks and the National Union Electric Company, makers of Exide batteries, formed a joint venture to produce a new electric car, the Henney Kilowatt. The car was produced in 36-volt and 72-volt configurations; the 72-volt models had a top speed approaching 96 km/h (60 mph) and could travel for nearly an hour on a single charge. Despite the Kilowatt's improved performance with respect to previous electric cars, consumers found it too expensive compared to equivalent gasoline cars of the time, and production ended in 1961.
In 1959, American Motors Corporation (AMC) and Sonotone Corporation announced a joint research effort to consider producing an electric car that was to be powered by a "self-charging" battery. AMC had a reputation for innovation in economical cars while Sonotone had technology for making sintered plate nickel-cadmium batteries that could be recharged rapidly and weighed less than traditional lead-acid versions. That same year, Nu-Way Industries showed an experimental electric car with a one-piece plastic body that was to begin production in early 1960.
The U.S. and Canada Big Three automakers had their own electric car programs during the late-1960s. In 1967, much smaller AMC partnered with Gulton Industries to develop a new battery based on lithium and a speed controller designed by Victor Wouk. A nickel-cadmium battery supplied power to an all-electric 1969 Rambler American station wagon. Other "plug-in" experimental AMC vehicles developed with Gulton included the Amitron (1967) and the similar Electron (1977). More battery-electric concept cars appeared over the years, such as the Scottish Aviation Scamp (1965), the Enfield 8000 (1966) and two electric versions of General Motors gasoline cars, the Electrovair (1966) and Electrovette (1976). None of them entered production.
On July 31, 1971, an electric car received the unique distinction of becoming the first manned vehicle to be driven on the Moon; that car was the Lunar rover, which was first deployed during the Apollo 15 mission. The "moon buggy" was developed by Boeing and Delco Electronics, and featured a DC drive motor in each wheel, and a pair of 36-volt silver-zinc potassium hydroxide non-rechargeable batteries.
Read more about this topic: History Of The Electric Vehicle
Famous quotes containing the words gasoline and/or dominates:
“I love the smell of napalm in the morning. You know, one time we had to hailbomb, for twelve hours, and when it was all over I walked up.... We didn’t find one of ‘em, not one stinking dink
body. That smell, you know, that gasoline smell. The whole hill. It smelled like ... victory.”
—John Milius, U.S. screenwriter, Francis Ford Coppola (b. 1939)
“There has never been in history another such culture as the Western civilization M a culture which has practiced the belief that the physical and social environment of man is subject to rational manipulation and that history is subject to the will and action of man; whereas central to the traditional cultures of the rivals of Western civilization, those of Africa and Asia, is a belief that it is environment that dominates man.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)