Quote:
Originally Posted by 71CHEVYSHORTBED402
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This is what I have been thinking of.
Our Infrastructure is Better than the 1900's?
Link:
https://ethical.net/transport/we-had...this-happened/
By 1900, there were 4,192 vehicles on the streets of the US. Steam cars accounted for 1,681 of these; 1,575 were electric, and 936 had internal combustion engines.
If you wanted to get around town, the electric carriage was a better option – that is, if you were rich enough to afford one. Unlike internal combustion engines, electric vehicles were easy to turn on, accelerate, and brake, there was no exhaust, and you didn’t have something constantly exploding under your seat. Oh, and you also didn’t have to crank the engine every time you stopped, which is part of the reason that electric Studebaker won the Philadelphia race so handily. As a result of this ease of use, electric cars were looking like big business in the early 1900s, especially for the industry giant Electric Vehicle Company.
At the time, the Electric Vehicle Company was the biggest car manufacturer in the country, and they used a model that seems revolutionary now, but made sense back then. Instead of selling their cars, they rented them to people for one or more days. Each night the renter could return the car to a central garage where the Electric Vehicle Company would charge and service the vehicle – a model very similar to how stables worked at the time.
But despite the electric car’s success, its golden age was about to end.
First, an investigation by The New York Herald accused the Electric Vehicle Company of fraudulently securing a loan, leading to intense backlash that ultimately bankrupted the company in 1901.
Then, Henry Ford started banging out gas-powered vehicles, and with the help of scale, exploitation of his workers, and the invention of the electric starter in 1912 (which meant that drivers no longer had to crank their cars every time they wanted to travel), people started paying attention to the internal combustion engine. Around the same time, roads were beginning to be paved – but they took people out into the country, which lacked charging ports, so electric vehicles’ range became more of an issue.
Local and federal governments failed to build the infrastructure necessary for electric vehicles, meaning that gas-powered vehicles were a much better option for the growing hordes hoping to escape the city.
And finally, as the auto industry began to attract more customers in the early 1900s, advertising became increasingly gendered. Electric vehicles, more often than not, were sold to women as easy-to-drive parlors on wheels. Even Henry Ford’s wife owned an electric vehicle.