What Killed the Electric Car

Recently there has been a great deal of hyperactivity regarding alternate methods of energy production and energy consumption. This hyperactivity is fueled by the recent reports of climate change, and the awful draughts it has brought. Not everyone knows that one of the modern solutions to this problem is not so modern at all. The reason they don’t know this fact is that this solution nearly went extinct and stayed as such for more than half a century. This solution is the electric vehicle. Things that killed it there are many, but in essence, it killed itself.

In the late 1800s - early 1900s, the automobile business was just starting up and more and more people were switching from horses to cars. Horses required a significant amount of care, and when they were used for transportation in crowded cities like New York, the horses left behind unsightly heaps and some simply died while transporting their owners to their destinations. People, of course, seldom cleaned up after their loyal four-legged companions (Tarr).

When it came to departing from the idea of the horse, there were three options: the steam engine, the internal combustion engine (ICE), and the electric motor. In the 1910s, the market was evenly divided and none seemed like an obvious winner (Bottled). On a side note, there is an important distinction that needs to be made. An engine is “a motor that converts thermal energy to mechanical work”, whereas a motor is “a machine that converts other forms of energy into mechanical energy and so imparts motion” (Wolfram|Alpha). This means that all engines are motors, but not all motors are engines. Thus, it would be incorrect to refer to an electric motor as an engine.

The first competitor to the electric motor was the steam ...

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