Electric Vehicle History
The Collapse of Common Sense: Preservation of Big Oil and the Big Three Automakers. In 2003 "FreedomCAR" (Freedom Cooperative Automotive Research) was created as a public-private partnership between the United States Department of Energy, BP America, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, Shell Hydrogen, and The United States Council for Automotive Research (USCAR - a partnership among Daimler/Chrysler, Ford Motor Company and General Motors). What are the oil and automotive corporations doing together? What happened to Toyota's RAV4-EV program that produced 100% electric sports utility vehicles (that's right, SUV's!) that are still running, today, at a cost of two cents per mile? Engineer Nevres Cefo shows how Americans are being systematically misinformed and trapped with only one choice for their future transportation needs: the internal combustion engine and liquid fuels. Can we change the course of where we are going and how we get there? Yes we can, and Cefo shows you how to do it.
To most modern Americans, the electric automobile is a charming anachronism, a memory of a time long past, not unlike high button shoes or chicken houses in urban backyards. In fact, electric automobiles are making something of a comeback as society searches for alternative systems of locomotion for our precious private cars. Schifer looks in detail at electric autos, their development, eventual supplantation by gasoline guzzlers, and burgeoning return to favor. Although he devotes most of the book to the days when the very concept of machine-powered personal travel was new, Schifer, in the final analysis as well as chapter, makes the case for reviving electric autos. On the way, he examines the various reasons that development of alternatively powered automobiles stagnated and also the social history of the automobile and automobile ownership. Part car-nut's history, part social history, this is a fine resource for popular culture and American studies collections. The vintage photos and bibliography are by themselves arguably worth more than the purchase price.
Far from being a modern conception, electric cars were among the first vehicles on the road. In the formative days of the automobile, a third of cars were electric, and they challenged internal combustion engine-driven vehicles for primacy. Economic and environmental concerns have periodically revived widespread interest in electric cars and hybrid vehicles, and the quest for a non- or less-polluting vehicle that meets consumer’s performance demands continues today. The story of the electric car is a long one, and it is still being written. This illustrated history of electric and hybrid vehicles covers the companies that produced various models; the politics that have surrounded them; the environmental aspects of electric and hybrid vehicles versus internal combustion engines; efforts to overcome technological challenges associated with electric vehicles; marketing strategies through the decades; and public attitudes towards these vehicles throughout their existence. An appendix lists important dates in the history of electric cars, and a glossary defines associated acronyms.
Black (IBM and the Holocaust) spins the history of oil's ascendancy to dominance over the global energy market into a sordid tale of conspiracy, deception and murder. This enthralling book begins in the vast forests of Cyprus, whose wood fueled the ancient Mediterranean, and extends through the Elizabethan era, in which the Hostmen guild of Newcastle exerted political influence by monopolizing the British coal supply. The central thread of this well-researched book, which draws upon a vast array of archival sources and an extensive list of secondary texts, picks up centuries later with the competition in the American automotive market between electric power and oil-fueled internal combustion. The definitive blow in favor of oil comes with WWI, which prompted increased demand for gas-powered vehicles at the very moment Thomas Edison and Henry Ford aborted plans to develop an affordable electric car. The decades-long "General Motors conspiracy" solidifies the demise of electrically powered mass transit in American cities. Through it all, Black manages to keep this complex history compelling. By the time the author makes his final, impassioned plea for a bold new solution to the world's energy crisis, he has already made his case with devastating clarity. (Oct.)
The electric vehicle of historian David Kirsch's title is an old technology that seems ever on the verge of making a comeback. In the late 1890s, the electric engine competed with steam- and gasoline-driven engines to become the standard for automobile manufacturers, and it remained competitive for nearly a decade until, in the early 1900s, the internal-combustion engine captured the market.
It did so for complex reasons, few of them, in Kirsch's account, having to do with purely technological issues. Enter the "burden of history," a fruitful notion that reminds us that deterministic ideas of why things are the way they are--for example, that the lead-acid battery held insufficient power to carry cars over long distances without recharging, thus ensuring the victory of the more easily replenished internal-combustion engine--are often only half-right, if that. Kirsch urges that those concerned with analyzing the wherefores of the past take into consideration multiple causes, and not always the most apparent ones. The automobile, he continues, is not simply a machine, but "a material embodiment of the dynamic interaction of consumers and producers, private and public institutions, existing and potential capabilities, and prevailing ideas about gender, health, and the environment." In short, the automobile is a system unto itself, and how it came to take its present form--unchanged in many respects for a hundred years--is a story that involves many episodes.
It begins with a solemn funeral…for a car. By the end of Chris Paine's lively and informative documentary, the idea doesn't seem quite so strange. As narrator Martin Sheen notes, "They were quiet and fast, produced no exhaust and ran without gasoline." Paine proceeds to show how this unique vehicle came into being and why General Motors ended up reclaiming its once-prized creation less than a decade later. He begins 100 years ago with the original electric car. By the 1920s, the internal-combustion engine had rendered it obsolete. By the 1980s, however, car companies started exploring alternative energy sources, like solar power. This, in turn, led to the late, great battery-powered EV1. Throughout, Paine deftly translates hard science and complex politics, such as California's Zero-Emission Vehicle Mandate, into lay person's terms (director Alex Gibney, Oscar-nominated for Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, served as consulting producer). And everyone gets the chance to have their say: engineers, politicians, protesters, and petroleum spokespeople--even celebrity drivers, like Peter Horton, Alexandra Paul, and a wild man beard-sporting Mel Gibson. But the most persuasive participant is former Saturn employee Chelsea Sexton. Promoting the benefits of the EV1 was more than a job to her, and she continues to lobby for more environmentally friendly options. Sexton provides the small ray of hope Paine's film so desperately needs. Who Killed the Electric Car? is, otherwise, a tremendously sobering experience.
The story of General Motors' first mass-produced electric car, the EV1 (at first, unfortunately, named the Impact). This project was decades in gestation, the early dreams of pollution and noise-free vehicles taking a long time to progress beyond visionary prototypes. This was partly because of opposition to the concept from oil companies and the automotive industry. Eventually a combination of government prodding and technological advances in battery design made it possible. Schnayerson describes the supportive role of GM chairman Robert Stempel and the tenacity of a group of true-believing engineers who kept the idea alive after Stempel was ousted.
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