What killed the electric car?

© Galen Handy 2023  v4.8

 

By 1900, it was clear to all engineers that an electric motor was the ideal propulsion device for a vehicle, limited only by the source of energy.

 

The most practical way to store sufficient energy on board a vehicle as available electricity was in the reversible electrochemical reaction of a lead acid battery. The cost of this battery made the first electrics as expensive as the more labor-intensive internal combustion cars, which were full of expertly machined parts. Mechanically simpler steam cars were a brief price and sales leader before 1900, but they were slow to fire up, complicated to operate, and very fussy about water purity. In 1900 market share for Electric cars peaked at about 38% {1} due to the electric cab bubble, but rapidly fell to under 10% as the bubble burst. Electric car production led steam cars slightly from 1900 through 1904, and led dramatically after the White Motor Company quit steam in 1911. After WWI, both steamers and electrics fell off the charts. Some minor production continued through the mid-twenties.

 

High volume production techniques, including sophisticated machine tools, and moving assembly lines, brought the price down significantly for gasoline cars. Electric cars remained expensive, as they still required half a ton, or more, of lead, and over a hundred pounds of copper {2}. No matter how efficient the production techniques, and no matter how cheap the labor, a car still has to sell for more than the commodity cost of its materials.

Unable to compete on price, electric carmakers focused production on luxurious personal transportation, without the need for a professional driver. This made the electric car a good choice for affluent city dwellers replacing horse drawn coaches.

As the owner was more likely to be the driver, electric vehicle companies pioneered cars driven from inside the cabin. The initial target market for inside-drive cars were physicians, who needed to drive themselves at all hours and in all weather. It soon became clear that these simple-to-operate “parlors on wheels” were particularly attractive to wealthy women of independent spirit. They enjoyed a quiet conversation with friends, while getting around without husband or chauffeur in the loop.

 

 

Was the first age of the electric car killed by…

       

        The model “T” Ford?

 

Before Henry Ford introduced the model T in 1908, he purchased a Detroit Electric Coupé for his wife Clara. With production of the “perfected” Edison battery in early 1910, and redesigned lead-acid batteries the following year, improving capacity and reliability, there was a new wave of interest in electric car production. Without concern for the popularity of Ford’s recently introduced model T, about a dozen new companies introduced electric cars. Two were former Ford engineers, who helped develop the design and production for the model T, Robert C. Hupp and Walter Flanders. It was Flanders who set up the machine tools and organized the production line for the first run of model Ts.

 

Henry bought Clara a new Detroit Electric every two years from 1908 through December 1913. Ford posed for a publicity photo with their fourth Detroit Electric, a model 47 Brougham, which is still in Ford’s museum collection. He bought a second model 47 as a Christmas gift for his friend, Thomas A. Edison. That car is still in Edison’s West Orange, New Jersey garage, along with the 1911 model 15 Detroit Electric Victoria used to test his “perfected” battery.

 

Electric car sales increased steadily through 1916, interrupted by war production around 1917 {3}. This growth was somewhat obscured because market share for electrics was plummeting, as the growing middle class bought the cheaper new gasoline cars by the millions.

The gasoline car phenomenon started around 1902 with the curved dash Olds, built on the first auto assembly line, and then ballooned with Ford’s moving assembly line in 1913. Except for automated robotics, advances since then have been relatively incremental.

       

           Oil companies?

 

By 1900, Standard Oil founder John D. Rockefeller Sr. had become very wealthy selling kerosene for lamps, and oil for heating and lubrication, unintentionally helping save the whales. He retired in 1897, before gasoline-powered vehicles were of any significance as a market.

The oil companies were delighted when Duryea, Winton, Columbia, Locomobile, et alia, started building carriages that consumed their products, as the kerosene business was fading in the dependable glow of electric lights, and the superior illumination of the new Welsbach mantle gaslights. Other than elevators and electric streetcars, transportation was still dominated by muscle, coal-fired steam, and a dwindling number of wind-powered ships. There is no evidence the oil barons made any overt effort to suppress electric vehicle production {4}. With demand for gasoline exploding, they were not seen as a threat.

 

The Rockefeller family owned quite a few electric cars. John D. Sr., whom Elmer Sperry gave a ride to in his prototype electric car in 1898, owned three Healey Electrics and a Studebaker, his brother, William, had two Healeys, a Flanders, and a Baker. His daughter-in-law, Abby Rockefeller, owned two Detroit Electric model 46 Roadsters, one for Kykuit, the Hudson River estate, and one for the city. Abby’s Roadsters survive to this day {5}.

       

           Marketing to women?

 

Young college-educated men designed most early electrics. They proved their products by driving their cars in races and cross-country events. From 1896 through 1904 the fastest road vehicles on earth were electrics. There was usually one car in the product lineup of electric vehicle makes designed to please the designers and impress their peers. The second wave of electric car companies (1910-1915) often featured a sporty Roadster model in the first few years of production, which was dropped later due to lack of sales.

Electrics made the best weather tight enclosed Coupés.

As it became clear that the market was segmenting, and wealthy women became the principle users of the product, design and marketing became focused on those customers. 

 

Henry Ford’s wife was not alone in preferring to drive an electric car, so did the wives of many other men who owned gasoline car related companies, such as: Benz (American), Cadillac, Carnegie, DuPont, EMF, Hupmobile, Kaiser, Lozier, Marmon, Olds, Packard, Timken, Studebaker, and Stutz {6}. Marketing focus was probably not a factor in their choice. Gentlemen of means often preferred large, powerful, gasoline touring cars. From 1913 on they were usually equipped with electric starting and lighting systems, arguably making them hybrids.

 

 

The electric car was killed by:

       

        War

 

All automobile manufacturing is affected by a war economy, but the electric car was hit hardest. A gasoline car had a ton of iron and steel, whereas an electric was full of the lead and copper needed for projectiles and shell casings. In the buildup to America entering the First World War the price for these materials skyrocketed, along with their all-important scrap value. The lead from electric car batteries was redistributed, somewhat randomly, throughout the landscape of Europe. The Second World War brought the scrapping of even more electric cars; the copper and lead for ammunition and the aluminum-clad bodies for aircraft manufacturing.

 A few surviving old electrics did hit the road for the first time in years, to get around fuel rationing.

 

 

           Kettering

 

It was not the intent of Charles F. Kettering to effect electric car sales. He designed the first practical petroleum-engine electric-starting system for Henry Leland of Cadillac in 1910; it was introduced in the 1912 model year.

Starting an explosion engine with a hand crank was hazardous, strenuous, and occasionally lethal. Although Cadillac and its partners paid for the development, they did not demand exclusive use. By 1915 some two hundred thousand gasoline-cars had electric starters, eliminating one of the major advantages of electrics, while making larger, more powerful, high-compression engines practical.

Kettering also directed the development of lead in gasoline, for higher compression engines, chlorofluorocarbons as refrigerants, and fast drying solvent-based paints, which were a significant contributor to air pollution {7}.

He was the poster child for unintended environmental consequences.

 

       

           The Battery

 

In a typical 1915 electric car, the lead-acid battery was like having a half-ton gasoline tank, which used up the space under both the front and rear hoods, held only a gallon or two of gasoline, and took eight hours to fill.  Even worse, it had to be replaced every five to ten years at  ~$250 each time, which is equivalent to ~$7,500 in 2023 dollars. An Edison nickel-iron alkaline battery had usefully greater capacity, especially by weight, but cost ~$800, equivalent to ~$24,000 in 2023 dollars. At the time, many gasoline cars sold for less than $400, half the price of an Edison battery alone. The Edison battery also had lower charging efficiency, a higher self-discharge rate, and lost more capacity near freezing. However, the Edison battery often lasted longer than the vehicle, and was popular in delivery trucks where they got daily use {8}. As gasoline cars became more refined, electric cars just couldn’t make the price point to stay competitive. Limited range (30-100 miles) made them most practical as a second car in cities.

 

Electric vehicles did not go away entirely; they remained popular on the factory floor, golf courses, and in senior communities. They were still in use through the 1940s as city delivery trucks.

Around 81,000 electric pleasure cars were made before WWII {3}.

 

Since the early 1960’s, many have tried to rekindle the spark. Battery storage capacity by weight, volume, and cost is steadily improving, but the concept of practical pure electric personal transportation still awaits better energy storage density at an affordable price.

Hydrogen-consuming fuel cells are essentially a different kind of battery, and hydrogen costs more than house current. The main practical advantage is a much faster recharging time.

 

There are parallels between the Edison battery back then and modern lithium cells now. Both are too expensive for most pure electric car applications, and both are limited in the possibility of significantly lower prices because of the cost of the basic raw materials. In both, cobalt can solve issues with stability and capacity, but becomes a significant part of the high cost {9}.

 

Hybrid cars can be the best current option. The range extension of the engine makes a smaller battery more acceptable than in a pure electric. The added cost of the internal combustion engine system is partly offset by the lower battery cost. Those who keep a car through a battery replacement are likely to recover the difference.

 

Because of an electric motor’s low speed torque, mechanical simplicity, compact size, and precise control, the electric-assist hybrid has become the technology of choice for modern super-cars.

 

Elon Musk realized it’s not sensible to make an “economy” car with a battery that doubles the cost, just as the first generation of electric carmakers did. The difference with his Tesla is that he made a hot performance car for the affluent, rather than a sedate luxury car for the entitled. We can thank him for flipping the image of the electric car from the little old lady to the action hero.

 

 

{1}      This figure is attributed to the 1900 census.

 

{2}      A generalization based on the classic period (~1911-1925). Before 1911 most cars were lighter vehicles, often open, which usually ran on a 48-Volt battery. For the same horsepower, these cars would have 40-50% less lead, and 80-100% more copper, than the later standardized electrics, which had larger batteries of around 80-84 Volts for increased range, and convenient charging with a mercury arc rectifier from 117 Volt AC mains.

In practice, most of the early cars had less powerful motors, making the amount of copper more similar.

 

{3}      There is hard data on Detroit Electric annual production from the shipping ledgers. Fortunately, they were the highest volume producer, with worldwide distribution, and thus a fairly good representation of the entire industry (for cars made after 1908).  The Studebaker Museum has sales records of the 1,841 electrics they produced from 1902 – 1912.  Estimates of production for the other companies are based on serial number databases compiled from state automobile registrations and remaining vehicles.

Registrations from:

California: 1914, 1915, 1917, 1921; Connecticut: 1915, 1918, 1920; Illinois: 1908, 1909; Massachusetts: 1914 (partial); New England: 1915; New Jersey: 1914, 1915, 1916; New York: 1914, 1915, 1916; Ohio: 1909, 1915 (both partial); Rhode Island: 1914.

 

{4}      I have not encountered a hint of suppression of electric cars by oil companies or explosion carmakers in any contemporaneous magazine (The Horseless Age 1895- 1918; Electric Vehicles 1911-1917; The Motor, Motor Age, Motor World, The Automobile, Scientific American, various editions) or newspaper articles from the period. There was a lot written about getting better infrastructure support from electric utilities and better roads from politicians, both were eventually accomplished.

 

{5}      One of her Detroit Electric model 46 Roadsters is still at Kykuit, near Tarrytown, NY. The other one was in Winthrop Rockefeller’s Arkansas collection until 1975, and now resides at the National Auto Museum, in Reno, Nevada.

The Sperry reference is from: Thomas Parke Hughes, Elmer Sperry Inventor and Engineer, (The John Hopkins Press, 1971, rpt. 1993) p.  87.  Rockefeller advised Sperry to sell his company to people with deeper pockets; which he did.

 

{6}      This list is compiled from automobile registrations, the shipping ledgers (which sometimes mention the end user), and advertising. It is probably a small fraction of possible examples. In 1911 Pierre du Pont bought six Detroit Electrics for the women in his family. In 1914 he bought another.

 

{7}      Developed by DuPont at Kettering’s request.  Pierre du Pont and the DuPont Company were significant owners of General Motors 1914–1961. Charles Kettering (1876-1958) became a VP in charge of research at GM in 1920. Pierre du Pont was an executive and/or board member at GM from 1915 to 1929. (Wikipedia)

 

{8}      The Detroit Electric ledgers show Edison batteries were fairly popular in private cars; at around 30% of cars shipped in 1910, 1911 and 1912, falling to 5% during the recession year of 1913, 4% in 1914, and becoming rare after 1915. They were the battery of choice for Detroit Electric, Lansden, and many other electric trucks in fleet service, where daily use cycles and long service life made them cost effective.

 

{9}      Cobalt helped solve the electrochemical problems of the original 1903 Edison cells, but was too expensive for the final production design of 1910 (Paul Israel, Edison, a Life of Invention (John Wiley & Sons, 1998) pp. 417 & 418. Cobalt is used in many of the lithium battery formulations, potentially costing more than the lithium.