Did You Know - The First Cars Were Electric?

 Major technological change is happening all around the world. You can see it everywhere but sometimes when change happens is just history repeating. This is evident in the electric car in 1900 about 40% of cars for electric 38% ran on steam and only 22% ran on gasoline. Now as we approached the 2020s we're rediscovering the electric car. So, how could the electric car be so popular only to all but vanish by 1935? While we're most of the first cars electric and what happened to them?

DAWN OF THE CAR

The first practical electric car was built by Thomas Davidson in 1835. Surprisingly this was almost 30 years after the first hydrogen car.

The gasoline engine didn't come about until 1817 and the first production car was 1885 by Karl Benz.

 Cars company would later be known as Mercedes-Benz Rudolf diesel would unveil his diesel engine running on peanut oil at the World's Fair in Paris 1900. The first few decades of the 1900s would see the widespread introduction of the internal combustion engine. In a way, this technology was taking on the baton from the steam engine in the 1800s. Yes, steam-powered cars did exist but unfortunately, they required 45 minutes to warm up in cold weather and needed to be topped up with substantial amounts of water limiting their range.

There had to be a better solution. The early gasoline-powered cars were better than steam but were by no means perfect. To get them started you needed a lot of muscle to wrestle with a hand crank and even changing gears was a tall task.

This wasn't to mention that they were noisy often vibrated and shook and emitted an offensive odor.

RISE OF THE ELECTRIC CAER

For these reasons, electric cars were seen as the best way forward in personal transport. They were whispering quite easy to drive and required relatively little effort to run. Also, electric cars will perfectly fit for short trips around the city as country roads weren't suited for cars just yet they were too bumpy and treacherous. Big names such as Ferdinand Porsche founder of the Porsche Motor Company and Thomas Edison went all-in on the electric trend. In fact Porsches very first car in 1898 was an electric model known as the loaner Porsche.

One year later Edison set out in the mission to make better longer-lasting batteries for cars. He believed that this form of transport was the future. So he was determined despite many attempts he ultimately abandoned this vision a decade later. At the turn of the century overall, the car electrical otherwise was seen as an expensive novelty only for the rich. They needed to be a way for the common man to travel to and fro as he pleased. Cars needed to be affordable yet mass-produced. It would be a man named Henry that would bring this into reality. Henry Ford thought hard about how cars were produced and realized, that assembling a single car by a group of three or four men was very inefficient.

By observing how meat and tin factories were run. He understood that an assembly system would be much better suited. This system would only have a person work on a specialized part before that part moved on to the next person down the line. With the idea of the assembly line, he revolutionized the car industry allowing cars to be mass-produced for the first time. This brought the price down to an affordable level by 1914 Ford was selling more cars than all the other car manufacturers combined. A Model "T" sold for about two hundred and sixty dollars or six thousand four hundred dollars today.

While an electric roadster sold for around 1007$ dollars or 4300$ dollars today. There was just no electric answer to the cheaper gasoline Model "T" or was there as it turns out. There almost was this next part is a story that's often lost in history. It was known that Henry Ford and Thomas Edison were very close friends Ford used to work at Edison's lighting company when he created his first experimental car in 1896. It isn't encouraged to perceive this path resulting in the Ford Motor Company. In 1914 the pair were working on an experimental electric car.

 He is Henry Ford in an issue of the New York Times on January 11th, 1914.

"Within a year I hope we shall begin the manufacture of an electric automobile. I don't like to talk about things which are a year ahead, but I am willing to tell you something about my plans.

The fact is Mr. Edison and I have been working for some years on a good` an electric automobile which would be cheap and practicable. Cars have been built for experimental purposes, and we are satisfied now that the way is clear to success.

The problem so far has been to build a storage battery lightweight which would operate for long distances without recharging.

Mr. Edison has been experimenting with such a battery for some time."

Edison's words in a 1914 issue automobile topics was interesting.

"I believe that ultimately the electric motor will be universally used for trucking in all large cities and that the electric automobile will be the family carriage of the future. All trucking must come to electricity. I am convinced that it will not be long before all trucking in New York will be electric."

So, the details of what happened next are pretty sketchy. Some people say that the experimental labs for the electric cars were burnt down in a fire. Others say that the oil industry got to Ford. But the most likely explanation that the batteries that Ford wanted to use weren't capable of powering an electric car. Whatever the reason eventually the project fell apart after 1.4 million dollars of investment around 34 million dollars today. With a no cheaper mass-produced model insight, this was the beginning of the end for the electric car. The invention of the electric starter which gained popularity in the 1910s. Took the manual effort out of starting a gasoline car. This combined with the cheap oil of the time all impacted the viability of the electric car. Further to this the quality of the roads began to improve meaning that people weren't just limited to inner-city travel, in the end, it was all too much and the superior range of the patrol car was the final straw that ultimately led to his downfall. The battery technology just wasn't there throughout the decade's many attempts to bring both the electric car was made perhaps none more infamous than General Motors everyone in the 1990s. But as we all know today the electric car is finally here.

After seeing what Tesla has done major manufacturers such as Volvo, Aston Martin, General Motors, Jaguar, and Land Rover are all pledging to go electric it is funny the way things go sometimes.