5 ms·

> battery technology would have progressed far more had the electric car been chosen This seems unlikely. There were major industrial and military uses for rec

> battery technology would have progressed far more had the electric car been chosen This seems unlikely. There were major industrial and military uses for rechargeable batteries throughout the 20th century. Things like submarines, portable electronics, stationary fallback for critical services (phone exchanges) etc., all added up to a substantial economic interest in battery technology. The Nikel-Cadmium chemistry was known since 1899, but the materials and production process were considered too expensive to make them practical until mid 20th century. Advanced processing such as powder sintering to increase area were simply unknown at the time when the ICE vs EV competition was in play. By the 1920s, the ICE and petrol fueled cars were capable of ranges and fuel economies we can barely reach even today with Lithium batteries, a technology that became possible only in the 70s, taking advantage of substantial lateral progress in material and chemical science. A hypothetical world of electric vehicles would have spurred battery sales and investment by an order of magnitude or so, but the actual effects in hastening productization of high density cells would have probably been marginal and below what was required to win against the ICE, disproving the hypothesis. You can see this diminishing return of research at work today where, despite the order of magnitude increase in the battery market, progress is very still sluggish, pitted against hard, physical limits.

cyberax 3y ago
> This seems unlikely. There were major industrial and military uses for rechargeable batteries throughout the 20th century. But there are non-rechargable batteries. Zinc-air batteries have around 600 Wh/kg energy density (3 times more than Li-Ion) and they could have been manufactured with the technologies of the early 1910-s. Zinc-air batteries can't be recharged in the usual sense, but zinc oxide can be reworked into the metal form easily.
actionfromafar 3y ago
True, but it’s easy to imagine (to me!) an alternative past with battery replacement chariots etc.
fwungy 3y ago
Energy density is the issue. Gasoline has amazing energy density out of the box. Getting batteries anywhere near that may be impossible. Battery applications are critical. Tons of money has been spent on research. If there was something revolutionary to discover it's likely it would have happened. 100 mile EV town cars would be great, they'd be much less money than the long range EVs and target air pollution in the places that need it most. Trying to make EVs take over for ICEs via policy mandate is just insanity.
- bluGill 3y ago
  The proplem with the 100 mile ev is most people have the 1% trips they don't work for. extra cars are expensive so you are better off with one that does it all instead of trying to figure out those exceptional trips. i've tried to rent cars and been turned away because they were out. I've tried to rent but discoverd I wasn't allowed to do what I want (rocks are hard on trucks so I don't blame them, but it means I have to own for those weird things)
  - theshrike79 3y ago
    I did the math (kinda). I save so much on the 99% of drives when driving with electricity vs gasoline so I can just rent a car for the or fly/go by train and get a taxi in my destination.
    - bluGill 3y ago
      I've done the math myself, and it never works out to fly/take the train. Of course part of this is I have a family. I'm buying 5 plane/train tickets - and always in the busy/expensive time when everyone else is also off school and trying to travel. I'm not renting a small car - my family won't even fit - but a minivan (if you can find one). Sure I'm spending 4-5 days driving, but that is a substantial cost savings.
  - MostlyStable 3y ago
    depending on how much cheaper a 100 mile range EV was, I might be willing to consider it and then rent an ICE vehicle for the few times a year I needed extra range. I am considering that option anyways since, while my current EV is fine for long (10+ hour) drives, it is potentially too small for when I have a second kid + dogs. While I'm hoping that a roof rack will make the vehicle still work (hopefully the range hit won't be too big), if it doesn't work, renting a car a few times a year is more than offset by my fuel savings the rest of the time. Had a 100 mile range EV been available at a significant cost savings, I might have done that and started renting now for range reasons rather than space reasons.
xenadu02 3y ago
You need lithium chemistry to be competitive and that requires nano level understanding of the anode/cathode crystal structure. That essentially requires quantum mechanics which wasn't even a thing during the two decades when steam, electric, and gas/diesel were fighting for supremacy. Not to mention the manufacturing tolerances required to get reasonable diffusion rates which is the major limiting factor for charge/discharge rates (and a large component of temperature sensitivity). You might make the case that steam power would have dominated until the 40s-60s if the Doble-style steam generator had been available in say 1890. By the time they figured out how to make useful steam cars gasoline had already won. For the curious: the Doble-style system uses a steam tube that flashes water instantly to steam - not unlike instant hot water heaters but for steam. They also used condensers so the steam was cooled by a radiator, condensed, and the water re-used. Often paired with a double or triple expansion piston and an aux piston to run an electric generator for accessories. In these cars you turned the key and within 10-30 seconds you can drive away. No need to warm up a boiler and no large tank that might explode. And no water loss so no need to fill up on water either. They could essentially burn almost anything flammable. Steam also has instant full torque at any speed similar to an EV. But it was all developed far too late to matter.
- cornholio 3y ago
  To put it in perspective, the inventor of the first lithium battery, John Goodenough, a work he later received the Nobel prize for, was a world renowned material scientist at the top of his game, who led some of the most advanced research labs at MIT and Oxford. This was not some scientific serendipity, a low hanging penicillin; practical lithium batteries had to be plucked from the bosom of physics using the best tools and knowledge available in the 70s. How many electron microscopes, X-Ray crystallography machines, mass spectrometers, computer aided simulations and design systems and other contemporaneous tools, methods and theories had to be used by Goodenough's team and then the thousands of researchers in the subsequent decades to get to the point we are today with lithium batteries? It just doesn't sound like something that was possible pre-1940, the period where the bulk of the ICE improvement happened. And you really need lithium chemistry for practical EVs; despite the enthusiast conspiracy theory, the General Motors EV1 was nothing more than an clunky, expensive curiosity that failed in the marketplace. The only way EVs could become practical reality (if barely) was that the ICE stop improving, hampered by emissions regulations, to the point where advances in lithium battery technology and economics could catch up. Such environmental concerns were pure fantasy more than a century ago. Another issues to consider is that, even if not used for road transport, ICE were essential for aviation, the history of aviation being, to a fist degree approximation, a history of high power density propulsion methods that made mechanical flight possible. Major improvement of road engines (for example turbocharging, fuel injection, VVT) came from aviation. Since electric aviation remains still a dream, it follows that any counterfactual road transport history must account for the existence of a highly competitive aviation ICE. When imagining these fun little scenarios, like what if the Roman Empire invented the steam engine or Victorians the microchip, we almost always tend to discount the highly contextual nature of scientific discovery and innovation. Previous scientific and technical progress alter the world in profound and subtle ways, transforming what was once considered a pipe dream - and not for lack of trying and visionaries - into reality.

cyberax 3y ago

> This seems unlikely. There were major industrial and military uses for rechargeable batteries throughout the 20th century. But there are non-rechargable batteries. Zinc-air batteries have around 600 Wh/kg energy density (3 times more than Li-Ion) and they could have been manufactured with the technologies of the early 1910-s. Zinc-air batteries can't be recharged in the usual sense, but zinc oxide can be reworked into the metal form easily.

actionfromafar 3y ago

True, but it’s easy to imagine (to me!) an alternative past with battery replacement chariots etc.

fwungy 3y ago

Energy density is the issue. Gasoline has amazing energy density out of the box. Getting batteries anywhere near that may be impossible. Battery applications are critical. Tons of money has been spent on research. If there was something revolutionary to discover it's likely it would have happened. 100 mile EV town cars would be great, they'd be much less money than the long range EVs and target air pollution in the places that need it most. Trying to make EVs take over for ICEs via policy mandate is just insanity.

bluGill 3y ago
The proplem with the 100 mile ev is most people have the 1% trips they don't work for. extra cars are expensive so you are better off with one that does it all instead of trying to figure out those exceptional trips. i've tried to rent cars and been turned away because they were out. I've tried to rent but discoverd I wasn't allowed to do what I want (rocks are hard on trucks so I don't blame them, but it means I have to own for those weird things)
- theshrike79 3y ago
  I did the math (kinda). I save so much on the 99% of drives when driving with electricity vs gasoline so I can just rent a car for the or fly/go by train and get a taxi in my destination.
  - bluGill 3y ago
    I've done the math myself, and it never works out to fly/take the train. Of course part of this is I have a family. I'm buying 5 plane/train tickets - and always in the busy/expensive time when everyone else is also off school and trying to travel. I'm not renting a small car - my family won't even fit - but a minivan (if you can find one). Sure I'm spending 4-5 days driving, but that is a substantial cost savings.
- MostlyStable 3y ago
  depending on how much cheaper a 100 mile range EV was, I might be willing to consider it and then rent an ICE vehicle for the few times a year I needed extra range. I am considering that option anyways since, while my current EV is fine for long (10+ hour) drives, it is potentially too small for when I have a second kid + dogs. While I'm hoping that a roof rack will make the vehicle still work (hopefully the range hit won't be too big), if it doesn't work, renting a car a few times a year is more than offset by my fuel savings the rest of the time. Had a 100 mile range EV been available at a significant cost savings, I might have done that and started renting now for range reasons rather than space reasons.

xenadu02 3y ago

You need lithium chemistry to be competitive and that requires nano level understanding of the anode/cathode crystal structure. That essentially requires quantum mechanics which wasn't even a thing during the two decades when steam, electric, and gas/diesel were fighting for supremacy. Not to mention the manufacturing tolerances required to get reasonable diffusion rates which is the major limiting factor for charge/discharge rates (and a large component of temperature sensitivity). You might make the case that steam power would have dominated until the 40s-60s if the Doble-style steam generator had been available in say 1890. By the time they figured out how to make useful steam cars gasoline had already won. For the curious: the Doble-style system uses a steam tube that flashes water instantly to steam - not unlike instant hot water heaters but for steam. They also used condensers so the steam was cooled by a radiator, condensed, and the water re-used. Often paired with a double or triple expansion piston and an aux piston to run an electric generator for accessories. In these cars you turned the key and within 10-30 seconds you can drive away. No need to warm up a boiler and no large tank that might explode. And no water loss so no need to fill up on water either. They could essentially burn almost anything flammable. Steam also has instant full torque at any speed similar to an EV. But it was all developed far too late to matter.

cornholio 3y ago
To put it in perspective, the inventor of the first lithium battery, John Goodenough, a work he later received the Nobel prize for, was a world renowned material scientist at the top of his game, who led some of the most advanced research labs at MIT and Oxford. This was not some scientific serendipity, a low hanging penicillin; practical lithium batteries had to be plucked from the bosom of physics using the best tools and knowledge available in the 70s. How many electron microscopes, X-Ray crystallography machines, mass spectrometers, computer aided simulations and design systems and other contemporaneous tools, methods and theories had to be used by Goodenough's team and then the thousands of researchers in the subsequent decades to get to the point we are today with lithium batteries? It just doesn't sound like something that was possible pre-1940, the period where the bulk of the ICE improvement happened. And you really need lithium chemistry for practical EVs; despite the enthusiast conspiracy theory, the General Motors EV1 was nothing more than an clunky, expensive curiosity that failed in the marketplace. The only way EVs could become practical reality (if barely) was that the ICE stop improving, hampered by emissions regulations, to the point where advances in lithium battery technology and economics could catch up. Such environmental concerns were pure fantasy more than a century ago. Another issues to consider is that, even if not used for road transport, ICE were essential for aviation, the history of aviation being, to a fist degree approximation, a history of high power density propulsion methods that made mechanical flight possible. Major improvement of road engines (for example turbocharging, fuel injection, VVT) came from aviation. Since electric aviation remains still a dream, it follows that any counterfactual road transport history must account for the existence of a highly competitive aviation ICE. When imagining these fun little scenarios, like what if the Roman Empire invented the steam engine or Victorians the microchip, we almost always tend to discount the highly contextual nature of scientific discovery and innovation. Previous scientific and technical progress alter the world in profound and subtle ways, transforming what was once considered a pipe dream - and not for lack of trying and visionaries - into reality.