[lm28469]

> Did you know that electric cars were very popular 100 years ago - but because of the oil industry + government, they were quashed?

Er this is extremely simplistic. Electricity wasn't as common as now and battery tech was extremely shitty (requiring maintenance every few days, handling acids, &c.)

[nonrandomstring]

> > Did you know that electric cars were very popular 100 years ago - but because of the oil industry + government, they were quashed?

> Electricity wasn't as common as now and battery tech was extremely shitty (requiring maintenance every few days, handling acids, &c.)

When automobiles first appeared, gasoline was not as common as now and internal combustion technology was primitive, requiring almost constant maintenance, handling flammable liquids etc.

The modern IC automobile is unrecognisable from those of the Benz/Ford era. Had electrical vehicles been preferred for 100 years of government financial and policy support they'd be equal or superior to combustion technology, and vastly superior to Tesla and other EV's around now which are catching up on decades of lost development.

(but then neither of us have a time-machine to prove our post-facto fantasies about alternative histories)

[lm28469]

> When automobiles first appeared, gasoline was not as common as now and internal combustion technology was primitive, requiring almost constant maintenance, handling flammable liquids etc.

Yeah and one ended up easier to develop than the other. Even when we started producing proper batteries they were not good enough for cars (80s, 90s, 2000s), it took a few decade to get good engines, it took a century for proper batteries

[nonrandomstring]

> one ended up easier to develop than the other.

Because many hundreds of millions in research money went into doing so. Science and technology are not blind pursuits whereby we stumble across answers handed down by the gods. We progress according to our motivations.

This is the difference between so-called "technological determinism" which is an ignorant quasi-religious shrugging abdication of reason, and "science as agency", which is instrumental reason. It has it's down-sides, but the latter is infinitely preferable to the former, which, perhaps to labour the car-analogy painfully, is like taking your hands off the steering wheel.

[throwaway0a5e]

>Because many hundreds of millions in research money went into doing so.

Because that's where the progress was. They simply couldn't make progress on batteries at the time.

Making better engines is a question of manufacturing and metallurgy, stuff that is well within scope for the world as it existed 100yr ago. Making better batteries requires a much higher state of technological progress because you first need to understand chemistry at a much greater level and the fairly finicky chemistry involved has a lot of manufacturing progress as a prerequisite.

There's a reason we didn't get economically viable and high enough performance batteries for consumer electronics (say nothing of power tools and cars) until after we developed computer controlled industrial manufacturing processes.

Basically all the stuff you need to build good ICE cars you will need to develop on your way to developing good batteries. They built engines instead of batteries for the same reason the Romans built with stone instead of steel.

[nonrandomstring]

> Because that's where the progress was. They simply couldn't make progress on batteries at the time.

That's a descent into circular arguments and post-facto analysis.

The early twentieth century was a golden age of chemistry. We had the technology to do fractional distillation of petrochemicals and synthesise complex organics. To suppose that we could not have punched gigantic breakthroughs in ionic electro-chemistry is blinkered. Motor technology equally so. Sintering, rare-earth alloys, elaborate windings, and complex field analysis was well within the metallurgy and other technologies you describe, without computers.

But there can be no meaningful argument around it if you only hark back to "what was", instead of analysing the interplay between economic motives and progress. We're arguing at cross purposes if you're bringing up "facts" of history, and I'm talking about socio-economic dynamics.

And, more importantly, why?

So we can preserve a comfort that a 100 year journey into fossil fuels was not a colossal human mistake? Rationalising away the narrative that plausible alternative technological pathways existed achieves what exactly?

It's not like can change the past. So what is going on?

> There's a reason we didn't get economically viable and high enough performance batteries for consumer electronics

We didn't get anything. We didn't want them.

I appreciate this philosophy of technology stuff can be disorientating. It is scary stuff. Because if we admit that there are alternatives, that this is not a Panglossian universe and that we've made gigantic errors in the past, that opens up the terrifying possibility that we're making grave errors right now (which I believe we are). The myth of technology as a deterministically unfolding, monotonic mechanism is very comforting in that world.

[AftHurrahWinch]

Gasoline has an energy density of about 34.6 MJ/liter... the lithium-ion battery pack in a Chevy Volt has an energy density of about 0.4 MJ/liter.

One of those technologies is easier to develop than the other. Science doesn't need to be deterministic for some fruit to hang lower than others.

[verisimi]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_electric_vehicl...

"In 1828, the Hungarian priest and physicist Ányos Jedlik invented an early type of electric motor, and created a small model car powered by his new motor."

1828!!

"Rechargeable batteries that provided a viable means for storing electricity on board a vehicle did not come into being until 1859, with the invention of the lead–acid battery by French physicist Gaston Planté.[17][18] Camille Alphonse Faure, another French scientist, significantly improved the design of the battery in 1881; his improvements greatly increased the capacity of such batteries and led directly to their manufacture on an industrial scale."

"Electric battery-powered taxis became available at the end of the 19th century."

"To overcome the limited operating range of electric vehicles, and the lack of recharging infrastructure, an exchangeable battery service was first proposed as early as 1896.[41] The concept was first put into practice by Hartford Electric Light Company through the GeVeCo battery service and initially available for electric trucks."

It was viable technology!

[lm28469]

> It was viable technology!

Both were viable, one was much more easily developed. We can talk viability all day long, sadly it's history and there isn't much to discuss.

Solar panels are also viable and cheap right now, yet we don't use them much. Something existing and working doesn't mean it scales as easily as the alternatives.

If electricity storage is still a problem in 2022 you can imagine that it would be extremely hard in 1922. You can store gas in a bucket if needs be

[calvano915]

The viability was not properly assessed in regards to externalities of the targeted tech. Climate change, security related to oil, etc was not properly priced in.

[ben_w]

I think everyone who had a vote in 1922 and thought “Climate change? That won’t affect me!” (and almost everyone who also said “or my children or grandchildren”) would have been correct.

What are we doing wrong today with that level of disregard for things that may affect our great-great-grandchildren, and why?

[newsclues]

ICE vehicles are and were extremely shitty as well.