12 ms·

We went towards ICE vehicles because the power to weight ratio was so much better with gasoline.

• chiph 9y ago
  And the range. At the time, long-distance travel was becoming possible for the average vehicle owner. And they didn't want to stop for half a day every hundred miles. Just like today. Tangentally, I came across this film from Market Street in 1906. There's lots of different modes of transportation in use - horse-drawn carts, electric cars, gasoline cars, cable cars, electric trolleys, and pedestrians (who were amazingly casual about dodging between everything else that was moving - the accidental death toll was probably huge) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEvB_ZIWtAg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEvB_ZIWtAg
  • dsfyu404ed 9y ago
    >who were amazingly casual about dodging between everything else that was moving - the accidental death toll was probably huge Probably less than you'd think. Traffic now likes to forget that while the legal rules offer redundancy 99% of the time (if only one party follows the rules the other party should be able to take action to avoid a conflict if it is following the rules that apply to it) the legal rules do not supersede physics. I walk to work every day. Morons on foot cut off morons on bikes who cut off morons in cars who cut off heavy trucks. You only need to see a horse turned into taco meat once or twice to learn why you shouldn't rely on other traffic's ability to pick up the slack for your dumb decisions. People learn what to do and what not to pretty quickly when the stakes are higher than someone slamming on their brakes and honking at you.
• JoeAltmaier 9y ago
  ...and it took most of a century to get better batteries! What was the delay I wonder?
  • Aloha 9y ago
    Material Science really.