Why did the first car was electric but the cars after was gas, now they are electric

[Narwhalosh Whalescream]

It's like a full circle! Why did we go from electric>gas>electric rather than electric>electric>electric but better? What advantages do diesel and gasoline have?

[ghotihook]

Its actually part of the same reasons why everyone doesn't drive electric cars now. Charging, battery life and cost. There are tones of documentaries on this.

[Rennadrel]

Because of patent laws and the usual insatiable American greed. Ferdinand Porsche created an electric car years before Henry Ford helped pioneer the internal combustion engine. Petrol being a product that they could control and it was just another way for people to make money.

[XDurionX]

Petrol has a huge energy density, something that batteries will need decades to achieve.

[Mihalik]

Batteries.

Battery technology took a while to come far along to make EVs viable.

- - - Updated - - -

Because of patent laws and the usual insatiable American greed. Ferdinand Porsche created an electric car years before Henry Ford helped pioneer the internal combustion engine. Petrol being a product that they could control and it was just another way for people to make money.

Creating an electric vehicle and powering an electric vehicle are two distinct things.

Electric motors are pretty easy to build, they are actually way simpler than a combustion engine as they basically have no moving parts outside the transmission.

Problem has always been with actually powering them.

[Howel]

Wasn't particularly commercially viable. Even with todays battery technology, a full tank of gas, will often get you longer then any battery; and the weight difference is somewhere in 3-5 times area.
Hell, still kind of isn't viable insofar as pricing goes, not sure you have noticed, but a lot of countries had to do all sorts of tax credits, dropping sales taxes so and so on, just for EVs to compete in their same class.

[Shadowferal]

Petrol was dirt cheap way back then. And a lot easier to deal with than charge up a battery which took someone like the original Tesla to plug in the Earth...or something like that.

[Fantomen]

It's like a full circle! Why did we go from electric>gas>electric rather than electric>electric>electric but better? What advantages do diesel and gasoline have?

The first gas car did have a huge disadvantage, they was very hard to start using a crank, it demanding strength and skill. Hence easy to start electric cars did have a advantage over the early gas cars. Untill sombady did invented the electric start engine that made gas cars easy to start.

[Machismo]

Because of patent laws and the usual insatiable American greed. Ferdinand Porsche created an electric car years before Henry Ford helped pioneer the internal combustion engine. Petrol being a product that they could control and it was just another way for people to make money.

No it's not, its always been about the batteries. Even now, with decades of advancements on batteries, they still cannot get a car to go as far as a 20-gallon gas tank (at least not at a reasonable price). Sure, we're getting close, but that took a very long time.

[ldev]

What advantages do diesel and gasoline have?

Oh, none, except:

1. Price. Cupra Leon - 35k eur. 310 bhp (more like 325, VW at it again..) and goes 0-100 in what? 4.4 seconds? Cheapest electric that can match that? 50k+ eh? And a fun sports car like Toyota GT86 for 28k? What's the alternative?
2. Range. 800km is like the minimum on highway.
3. Recharge time. 2 minutes max? Versus... hours.
4. Recharge station availability. One every what? 3 kms in city, 20 in highway, if no charging place is available at the station - just wait 2 minutes instead of 2 hours for someone to finish charging.
5. Doesn't require owning your own house. So billions of people who live in flats can actually fucking own a car!

Are you 12 or something? Like, if there was a disaster happening, you really would take Tesla over gasoline car?

Electric cars are niche, gasoline cars are general use. If it fits your niche needs - good for you. For most people best they can do is pay way more for a plugin hybrid version, which still has ICE ice baby.

[Afrospinach]

Petrol has a huge energy density, something that batteries will need decades to achieve.

Not even theoretically possible.

The only way batteries can compete with chemical fuels is by efficiency.

Per kg I think hydrogen is 4-6 times more energy dense than a theoretically perfect lithium air battery. Presently li ions I do believe are 10-12 times worse than gasoline.

[Cosmic Janitor]

It's like a full circle! Why did we go from electric>gas>electric rather than electric>electric>electric but better? What advantages do diesel and gasoline have?

Because of the limitations at the time? We also still haven't completely figured them out, Li+ battery tech is still nowhere near as energy dense as normal fuel. Having only access to lead acid batteries back then doesn't make this better..

Heck pure electric may once again prove to be folly and we may still go for something like (m)ethanol fuel cells with ecologically sourced fuel down the line. ICE is on the way out, that much is clear, but we've pretty much reached the peak of batteries and improvements by orders of magnitude are highly unlikely (unless we magically find how to make ZPMs ).

[Afrospinach]

Because of the limitations at the time? We also still haven't completely figured them out, Li+ battery tech is still nowhere near as energy dense as normal fuel. Having only access to lead acid batteries back then doesn't make this better..

Heck pure electric may once again prove to be folly and we may still go for something like (m)ethanol fuel cells with ecologically sourced fuel down the line. ICE is on the way out, that much is clear, but we've pretty much reached the peak of batteries and improvements by orders of magnitude are highly unlikely (unless we magically find how to make ZPMs ).

It is very unlikely the electric cars will be a dead end. In the coming years we are going to see toyota(and possibly others) start mass producing solid state batteries which maybe be 30% better than current batteries in terms of energy density with a bunch of other benefits on top of that. If you look at EVs now consider what that means.

Yeah yeah, another day another battery technology. At least they have prototypes right now.

[Cosmic Janitor]

It is very unlikely the electric cars will be a dead end. In the coming years we are going to see toyota(and possibly others) start mass producing solid state batteries which maybe be 30% better than current batteries in terms of energy density with a bunch of other benefits on top of that. If you look at EVs now consider what that means.

Yeah yeah, another day another battery technology. At least they have prototypes right now.

30% is nothing if the goal is to reach the comfort of ICEs. Also people have been talking about solid state mass production for over 10 years now and it's been a constant "in two years". They always run into similar issues, lithium dendrites, prolonged shock resistance, production repeatability, etc. Electric itself won't be a dead end obviously, but the battery as a primary means of energy storage might not be the ultima ratio. As I said, a combined FC/battery solution seems rather promising, though barely any car manufacturer is even looking at such solutions right now, because they all just want a quick solution with minimal infrastructure investments, so they can milk the last days of ICEs, while prettying up their CO2 fleet statistics for tax reasons.

[Endus]

Oh, none, except:

1. Price. Cupra Leon - 35k eur. 310 bhp (more like 325, VW at it again..) and goes 0-100 in what? 4.4 seconds? Cheapest electric that can match that? 50k+ eh? And a fun sports car like Toyota GT86 for 28k? What's the alternative?
2. Range. 800km is like the minimum on highway.
3. Recharge time. 2 minutes max? Versus... hours.
4. Recharge station availability. One every what? 3 kms in city, 20 in highway, if no charging place is available at the station - just wait 2 minutes instead of 2 hours for someone to finish charging.
5. Doesn't require owning your own house. So billions of people who live in flats can actually fucking own a car!

Are you 12 or something? Like, if there was a disaster happening, you really would take Tesla over gasoline car?

Electric cars are niche, gasoline cars are general use. If it fits your niche needs - good for you. For most people best they can do is pay way more for a plugin hybrid version, which still has ICE ice baby.

Price: Electric cars are already cheaper than gas-drive cars, once you account for fuel costs over the lifespan of the vehicle.

Range: Like 99% of trips are under 80 miles. https://www.solarjourneyusa.com/EVdistanceAnalysis.php Most people literally just don't need more than the current range on electric vehicles. Worse, IC engine vehicles mostly don't have 800km ranges, either.

Recharge time: Less of an issue if you're always at a full charge in the morning from your wall socket. See the above point about 99% of trips not exceeding the range of most EVs.

Recharge station availability is quickly becoming a non-factor. And again; you'll need to hit up a station far less in the first place.

Why would you need to own a house for an EV? Parking lots for apartments can have charge stations just as easily as a personal home. And if your apartment doesn't have a parking spot, you're either living in a city where you don't need/want a vehicle, or you're making other arrangements to park it, which would include a charge station in this hypothetical.

[Elegiac]

It's like a full circle! Why did we go from electric>gas>electric rather than electric>electric>electric but better?

Short answer? Infrastructure.

Back in the day there simply wasn't the network of gas stations and the like that made gasoline powered cars a cost effective method of travel versus, say, trains.

We're seeing a similar thing now with electric cars and the lack of widespread charging infrastructure, but as Endus pointed out that's rapidly changing.

[Biglog]

A lot of wrong answers in here. The primary reasons were range and the availability of cheap gas/petrol in the US (gas is still cheap today in the US compared to most of the world). Electric cars were limited to 30-40 miles, which is only practical for small trips. The affordable model As and Ts by Ford (which still had hand crank starts btw) revolutionized that and when gas cars could travel hundreds of miles they made electric cars obsolete. It took another 100 years of technological advances in battery efficiency to today to get electric cars that have a range that can even start to compete with gasoline vehicles.

For those people in other parts of the world that haven't travelled to the US, it's easy to overlook how spread out things are. An early electric car didn't even have the range to go from one side of a metropolitan city to the other. It wasn't a conspiracy by gas companies or w/e other tinfoil hat theories people have suggested here. It's an odd cultural thing that has really skyrocketed in recent years that conspiracies are the first explanation for everything for many people nowadays. Route 66, visiting the Grand Canyon or Yosemite? Try recreating that trip with an early electric car today and see how far you'd get, and the answer why gas cars took over will become very clear.

[StillMcfuu]

Multiple reasons.
-Electric motors are simple and to power wheels or a car is a fairly simple adjustment to already invented motors. The petrol powered motor needed to be converted and integrated into the car.
-energy density is and continues to be an issue for electric vehicles, including recharge rate.

Probably still 50 years from actual wide spread adoption.

[Mayhem]

A lot of wrong answers in here. The primary reasons were range and the availability of cheap gas/petrol in the US (gas is still cheap today in the US compared to most of the world). Electric cars were limited to 30-40 miles, which is only practical for small trips. The affordable model As and Ts by Ford (which still had hand crank starts btw) revolutionized that and when gas cars could travel hundreds of miles they made electric cars obsolete. It took another 100 years of technological advances in battery efficiency to today to get electric cars that have a range that can even start to compete with gasoline vehicles.

For those people in other parts of the world that haven't travelled to the US, it's easy to overlook how spread out things are. An early electric car didn't even have the range to go from one side of a metropolitan city to the other. It wasn't a conspiracy by gas companies or w/e other tinfoil hat theories people have suggested here. It's an odd cultural thing that has really skyrocketed in recent years that conspiracies are the first explanation for everything for many people nowadays. Route 66, visiting the Grand Canyon or Yosemite? Try recreating that trip with an early electric car today and see how far you'd get, and the answer why gas cars took over will become very clear.

So you're going to ignore the conviction of NCL in 1949?

Sure, somehow European cities kept tramways and built subways on top but in the US it just wasn't viable to keep them because reasons.

[Themius]

Its actually part of the same reasons why everyone doesn't drive electric cars now. Charging, battery life and cost. There are tones of documentaries on this.

Also lobbying... purposeful suppression of electric vehicles in order to prop up the oil industry.