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Initial ads for electric cars.
Photo: Supplied / Josef Taalbi
There has been a huge capture of electric cars in recent years, and many of us would say they are having their moment in the transportation industry now.
But in the early twentieth century, electric vehicles accounted for 40 % of the market, while gasoline cars were only 20 % (the other 40 % were composed of steam -triggered vehicles). Some electric cars even marked speeds above 100 km/h.
Economic historian and associate professor at the University of Lund, Josef Taalbi, is researching this and spoke to Saturday morning About how the car the gasoline came to conquer.
He explained the popularity of electric vehicles, or ‘horsepower carriages’, as they were called, began to decrease in the twentieth century.
“Where there were no electric bars, people or car producers chose gasoline cars and, where there were electric railings, they chose electric vehicles,” said Taalbi.
Economic historian and associate professor at the University of Lund Josef Taalbi.
Photo: Provided
“The fact is that electricity was basically missing in the early twentieth century. There was not enough, but it expanded rapidly. Therefore, according to our estimates, if electricity would have started to develop 15 years ahead of what it actually did in the US, almost all car producers would really have chosen electric cars instead of gasoline cars, especially in big cities.”
The first electric cars could have a range of 135 km and were cheaper to drive than their gas colleagues. But as the advantages of gasoline cars have become more apparent, producers stopped developing the battery of electric cars.
“So we could have a completely different world. And that’s a little interesting to think, of course.”
The lack of energy infrastructure was not the only thing that led to the disappearance of the electric vehicle – in the 1910s, companies began to market their electric vehicles compared to women as “living rooms”, in an attempt to increase sales when car producers leaned to gasoline -powered vehicles.
“So they were basically marketed to women in order to sell what was then perceived how the limitations of cars in terms of range and speed, because women were perceived to have less mobility needs than men.”
Another factor was the impulse of the electric car: unlike gasoline vehicles of the time, they did not require a crank.
In the 1910s, car manufacturers began to market electric vehicles for women.
Photo: Supplied / Josef Taalbi
“The fact that you have to start the car the gasoline was interpreted as male,” said Taalbi.
“For the beginning of the crank, the car was a very, very heavy job, so that was something that played gender papers that day and age. While electric cars were clean and simple, and they were very simple to drive, and that was something that was seen as a kind of femininity.”
Unfortunately, this marketing angle would end up having the opposite effect – because men wanted to avoid buying cars they considered female, while women “probably started to see electric vehicles as limiting rather than release.”
What if it had been the opposite?
Taalbi is impartial with the idea that widespread use of the electric vehicle may have been the answer to the world’s environmental and climate problems.
“If you do some calculations, what my colleague and I did, you will see that the CO2 emissions that we could already save in the 1920s would have totaled a few dozen millions of tons,” he said.
“But then it must be a little critical, because of course electric cars trust the battery and the battery, well, you can have nickel, you can have iron, so that it also has environmental consequences.
“I don’t want to paint electric cars in an unrealistic light … They could also have environmental consequences. I mean, it talks about the notion that technologies can be problems with problems, but usually cause problems, which is why it is important not to see a single technology like a kind of panacea or a global solution.
“We can understand the benefits of technology from a short -term perspective. We really don’t know the long -term consequences.
“Technological development needs to occur in order to ensure that long -term interests are also brought to discussion.”
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