Go electric-1

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CARS: PAST, PRESENT... FUTURE ?
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The history of cars...ahem! automobiles... makes for interesting reading. No two questions that fast 'autos' were dreamed of by men in prehistory too. The Greeks and the Romans, among the ancients were worshippers of speed, though their two or four-wheeled contraptions never smelt of petrol or diesel fumes. Rather their 'emissions' were good manure for the avenue trees!

Though we are not here too much bothered about 'firsts', still it is a lark to find that the Frenchman Nicolas Cugnot is often credited with the building of the first road-going vehicle, and the first guy with the distinction of getting into a road accident! (We have no information whether he was charged by the police or not...) (http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aacarssteama.htm )

Road vehicles began with the steam behemoths of the late 18th C. From then on it was a procession of inventions and refinements through the next century that filled the crude roads of the time with a variety of 'automobiles' that clanged and hissed through the unpaved streets, frightening men and animals and giving some sort of 'bragging rights' to their owners. Rather than being utilitarian, these were mostly curiosities and proofs of concepts.

Most of us think that cars, as we know them today, are as old as that. Well, basically yes, and yet no! The gasolene-powered auto had to wait till the end of the 19th C to make its presence known, and then too it was a poor second to the 'established' electric car. Electric cars? Aren't they a new-fangled invention loved by the 'green brigade'? No, Sir. Electrics are older than their smelly cousins. Mid 19th C saw them 'overtaking' the ponderous steam contraptions in Europe and England. But their acceptance in the US had to wait till the last decades of the 19th C. But very soon America had a large population of electric cars. It is interesting to find that electrics outsold everything else in the landmark year 1900, and New York city by then had a fleet of stylish electric taxis. They even had an electric/gas hybrid too in those days --probably for the same reasons for which we build them today. Unbelievable? Well, that is just history for you.

History also tells us that in many years the land speed champs were the electrics. The average electric car had a range of about 30-35 km on a single charge, a top speed of about 25 km per hour and cost about $ 2,000. When you look at the 100 years plus that has passed since then, you could say pretty little has changed!

What made the electrics attractive?
"..... Electric vehicles had many advantages over their competitors in the early 1900s. They did not have the vibration, smell, and noise associated with gasoline cars. Changing gears on gasoline cars was the most difficult part of driving, while electric vehicles did not require gear changes. While steam-powered cars also had no gear shifting, they suffered from long start-up times of up to 45 minutes on cold mornings. The steam cars had less range before needing water than an electric's range on a single charge. The only good roads of the period were in town, causing most travel to be local commuting, a perfect situation for electric vehicles, since their range was limited. The electric vehicle was the preferred choice of many because it did not require the manual effort to start, as with the hand crank on gasoline vehicles, and there was no wrestling with a gear shifter...." (http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aacarselectrica.htm ) Ah, more or less the same reasons that should make them popular in our times too in our gridlocked, smelly cities.
But then what happened to this 'top-line' technology that was left to languish, while the 'second-rate' gas engine received all the 'research funding' and overtook the electric? If one chooses to read in between the lines, it was basically just one thing. In the large car market that America was fast becoming with wide-open country, its network of roads and its citizens' love of 'wanderlust', cheap Texas crude was the one factor in the equation that tilted the balance. Electrics did not drink oil. So if you wanted to sell oil, you had to have 'oil drinkers' or gas guzzlers. Those who are old in the tooth would remember the early tobacco industry ploys. Free smokes offered at the wayside 'converted' many into devotees of the stuff, thus making the tobacco corporates into powerful  oligarchies.

And aren't oil megacorps the great oligarchies of the present day? The nexus between the oil barons and the auto magnates have remained till the present--something like the 'Wintel' juggernaut of the computing world.

Surely the future of autos would have been different had Henry Ford, the grand-daddy of the assembly-line and mass production, gone the electric way. Sadly he hasn’t apparently confided in anybody why he chose to produce the petrol version of the ‘Tin Lizzie’ that went on to transform America. We can’t possibly know unless we could get hold of a capable ‘spirit’ medium and ask the great man himself. So we are left with guessing. My guess is that he wanted to “cut free of the electrical umbilical” that was city-centred, and go for the wide open country. Quite possible, and the rest, as they have a way of saying, is history.

There is an apocryphal story going the rounds in India about why nobody has till now 'invented' a really economic engine, one that just 'sipped petrol' -- after all these years of 'cutting-edge' research and what not, that auto companies brag of always in their ads released 'in public interest' !

A group of conscientious young engineers wrote to Dr A P J Abdul Kalam, (  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._P._J._Abdul_Kalam ) the former President of India and an honest gentleman whom India and Indians should be proud of. ( Last month when I visited a young friend of mine at his office, I was touched when I saw a small portrait of APJ lovingly kept on his desk. And I asked myself why I had not done that till then? Every young Indian, every student and every engineer should ask that question to himself or herself, I feel. It is good for each of us to have a 'role model', and APJ is one that anyone can be proud of. His simplicity is indeed the key to his greatness. In my humble opinion, India was the ideal Platonic Republic when 'ruled' by our beloved First Citizen APJ, the modern equivalent of the "Philosopher King" ! 101 salutes to him !!! )
(more to follow)