ColdFusion - Did You Know - The First Cars Were Electric?

Starting point is 00:00:00 You are watching Cold Fusion TV. Hi, welcome to another Cold Fusion video. Major technological change is happening all around the world. You can see it everywhere. But sometimes, when change happens, it's actually just history repeating. This is evident in the electric car. In 1900, about 40% of cars were electric. 38% ran on steam and only 22% ran on gasoline.

Starting point is 00:00:32 Now, as we approach the 2020s, we're rediscovering the electric car. electric car. So how could the electric car be so popular only to all but vanish by 1935? Why were most of the first cars electric and what happened to them? In this video, we'll take a look. I just want to give a shout out to Squarespace for helping make this video possible. SquareSpace is one of the easiest ways to build a website. There's nothing to patch or upgrade ever and it's flexible. The end result looks professional and the whole process makes building website easy. If you're looking to build your own website, start your free. trial today, visit www.squarespace.com slash cold fusion to get 10% off your first purchase.

Starting point is 00:01:14 First, a little timeline of the innovation in automobiles. The first practical electric vehicle was built by Thomas Davenport in 1835. Surprisingly, this was almost 30 years after the first hydrogen car. The gasoline engine didn't come about until 1870 and the first production car was in 1885 by Carl Benz. Carl's 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

Starting point is 00:02:07 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. For these reasons, electric cars were seen as the best way forward in personal transport.

Starting point is 00:03:04 They were whisper quiet, easy to drive, and required relatively little effort to run. In addition, electric cars were 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, Porsche's very first car in 1898 was an electric model known as the Loner Porsche.

Starting point is 00:03:32 One year later, Edison set out on the mission to make better, longer, blasting batteries for cars. He believed that this form of transport was clearly the future, so he was determined. Despite many attempts, he ultimately abandons this vision a decade later. At the turn of the century, overall, the car, electric or otherwise, were seen as an expensive novelty only for the rich. There 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

Starting point is 00:04:10 and realized that assembling a single car by a group of three or four men was very inefficient. By observing the way in which 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

Starting point is 00:04:34 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 $260 or $6,400 today, while an electric roadster sold for around $1,700 or $43,000 today. There was just no electric answer to the cheaper gasoline Model T. All was there. As it turns out, there almost was.

Starting point is 00:05:05 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. In fact, Ford used to work at Edison's lighting company when he created his first experimental car in 1896. Edison encouraged Ford to pursue this path, resulting in the Ford Motor Company. In 1914, the pair were working on an experimental electric car. Here's Henry Ford in an issue of the New York Times, January 11, 1914. Quote, within a year, I hope we shall begin the manufacture of an electric automobile.

Starting point is 00:05:39 I don't like to talk about things which are a year ahead, but I am willing to tell you something of my plans. The fact is, Mr. Edison and I have been working for some years on an electric automobile, which would be cheap and practical. 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-distance. without recharging. Mr. Edison has been experimenting with such a battery for some time." End quote. Edison's words in a 1914 issue of automobile topics was interesting. Quote, 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.

Starting point is 00:06:26 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 is 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 of investment, around $34 million today.

Starting point is 00:06:58 With no cheap match-produced model in sight, 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 petrol car was the power. the final straw that ultimately led to its downfall, the battery technology just wasn't there. Throughout the decades, many attempts to bring back the electric car were made, perhaps none more infamous than General Motors EV1 in the 1990s.

Starting point is 00:07:44 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 really is funny the way things go sometimes. So anyway, that's it. Thanks for watching. I hope you learned something from this video. If you've just stumbled across this channel, feel free to subscribe. This has been Degogo, you've been watching Cold Fusion, and until next time, I'll see you again for the next video. Cheers guys, have a good one.

ColdFusion - Did You Know - The First Cars Were Electric?

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