V. ROADTRIPPING: Origin Story
The EV is a product of nineteenth-century European innovative patchwork. The exact progression is tough to nail down, but the story goes something like the following.
This post is part one of an ongoing series, “ROADTRIPPING,” where I analyze the origin and developments of the century-old American Road Trip phenomenon against the backdrop of an ever-dimming American Dream.
Missed the last post? Go here.
Sottish engineer Robert Anderson’s “horseless carriage,” (a battery and motor fastened to an actual carriage), provided a loose structural foundation for the Electronic Vehicle (EV). Short battery life-spans proved a major hang-up over the next 40 years until French innovator Camille Alphonse Farue optimized battery life with his iteration of lead-acid batteries. Farue used a design initially developed by French physicist Gaston Planté, who created the first storage (aka rechargeable) battery. And better batteries meant more speed.
Meanwhile, Constant Jenatzy, a Belgian tire manufacturer, established the nation’s first rubber plant. His son, Camille, spent his younger years studying engineering and racing bicycles before his pivot into the EV world. In 1899, he became the first human to reach 100 kilometers/hour, smashing all previous world records which traditionally plateaued around 30 kilometers/hour. He did it in a custom-made, bullet-shaped vehicle called La Jamais Contente, which roughly translates to “The Never Satisfied.”
Americans produced EVs as early as the 1830s, with one battery patent submitted in 1831. The operational scale and connectedness of the European inventors’ network provided a strong leg up, however, which EV manufacturers enjoy to this day.
CleanTech analyst Zachary Shahan reports roughly 89,000 American autos were operational in 1900. Thirty-eight percent, or 33,842, were eclectic (another 40 percent ran on steam-powered and the final 22 percent electricity) which means EV were almost twice as common as their gas-fueled counterparts that year.
The 1900’s national scale is relevant, of course; At the turn of the century, automobile ownership was still relegated to the sporting wealthy and the innovators. The total number of autos on record was roughly 0.03 percent of today’s fleet (~275 million, according to Statista). The auto industry’s explosion in the following decades pushed innovators to prioritize cheap energy sources, like gasoline.
Ford sold 15 million Model Ts in 18 years before switching to Model A in 1927. The company then sold approximately five million in just five years, confirming that the Model T phenomenon was no fluke. America was hooked, and vehicles were irreversibly wrapped into daily American life even in rural and low-rent communities.
Just a few decades prior, Americans’ trepidations about autos ran high. While not all examples are quite so vivid, legend has it Vermont once instituted a law requiring that at least one individual walking on foot (and waving red flags) must precede any automobile in operation. Many cities instituted laws to dissuade citizens from operating the machines or banned them altogether.
These reservations, however, had little to do with environmental preservation. The auto industry prioritized cost- and production-efficiency and electric models soon phased out. If anything, Americans saw their gas-powered automobiles as a requisite for discovery. For context, the Oregon Trail’s heyday in the mid-1800s peaked just when automobiles hit the national innovative scene. By the time Americans settled in the far western territories, automobiles provided unprecedented access between coasts (providing the roads and weather permitted). Previously, such quick travel was only available for a fee—on the train’s schedule. Within just a few decades of the Donner Party’s demise, automobiles were covering comparable mileage at virtually no cost to the diver.
Even after the continent’s notable successes, European manufacturers shifted to petrol-powered vehicles, too. America had optimized the original designs for mass production and common use, and it appears the cost-efficient model was simply too hard to pass up. EVs soon dropped off the face of the popular innovative scene. Manufacturers in the previous century envisioned automobiles as sporting and luxury items, but the practical demands of expanding populations and industrial scale (not to mention the World Wars) changed all that.