Last time I checked cars can drive on dirt roads, they do it all the time. Not the best for wear and tear but drivable. So you can go 30 or 40 miles on a charge, big whoop!
WI: Model T was electric?
- Thread starter phx1138
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Last time I checked cars can drive on dirt roads, they do it all the time. Not the best for wear and tear but drivable. So you can go 30 or 40 miles on a charge, big whoop!
It's worse than that, modern battery types like Lithium Ion and NiMH require quite sophisticated management, in fact standard battery packs have a computer chip built in.
Trying to charge them "by hand" is gonna be like early artillery, either too little effect or they literally blow up in your face.
In other words you're stuck with lead-acid until microchips are sufficiently small, reliable, common & cheap.
Now, there are many other uses for batteries, and cars will not add greatly to the research pot until the number of cars start to rise. Basically no change in the 00's, rising to maybe a decade of advance by WW2, i.e 50's tech in the 40's.
Another point is that the electric car market (or at least the batteries for them) can easily fragment on a city by city basis, due to climate and different electric systems, at least until standardization arrives...
So you're sure an electric motor, today, is at least twice as efficient as it was in 1900? I'm not.Johnrankins said:
Neither am I sure a car like the T, on 20" diameter rims only about 4" wide gets as little range as one with 15" rims 7" wide.
And for those people who don't need more range, why should a car staying parked overnight make a difference?Johnrankins said:
Moreover, why do you presume cars, when parked somewhere, can't be recharged in the parking lot? (Plug-ins for block heaters are common for apartment buildings & businesses here; I imagine something like it would become common for all businesses. How you make the driver pay, IDK...)
And you continue to ignore the fleet user. I presume their demand, which doesn't meet your preconceptions, is too inconvenient for you.Johnrankins said:
You also contine to ignore what I've said from the beginning: IC is not being banned. If you were right, no electric cars would ever have been sold. Clearly, that's not so. Since it's not, you obviously have missed something.
A car even remotely as common as the T would help with that, wouldn't it?Starkad said:
Trains would be massively faster, way more comfortable, and probably easier, so no, I wouldn't expect cars to make too much difference until the New Deal roads come along, and even then, trains are still faster, and take no effort on the part of the traveller.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detroit_Electric
http://www.detroitelectric.org/
20 mph and an 80 mile range (probably declining as the batteries faded)
Yes it is possible that Ford could have considered an electric Model T (E-T?)
The trouble is that it would cost 10x as much!
Even if you accept Ford could do the same cost savings with the electric car, the first Model T's marketed for $850 compared to $2650 for the Detroit Electrics. The Model T price fell to around $260 in the 20's.
As a comparison the battery cost alone for the Detroit Electrics was $600
http://www.detroitelectric.org/
20 mph and an 80 mile range (probably declining as the batteries faded)
Yes it is possible that Ford could have considered an electric Model T (E-T?
)The trouble is that it would cost 10x as much!
Even if you accept Ford could do the same cost savings with the electric car, the first Model T's marketed for $850 compared to $2650 for the Detroit Electrics. The Model T price fell to around $260 in the 20's.
As a comparison the battery cost alone for the Detroit Electrics was $600
Except cars sold well long before the New Deal. By a good decade or so. A good 15 million sold by 1927.http://www.history.com/topics/automobiles. So no trains didn't make a difference. The problem is that you can't really beat 300Xpower density!
So not 25mi at all. So much for 4x the battery durability & half the motor efficiency.Derek Pullem said:
How much of that was marketing, & how much production cost? Most IC cars of the era were hand-built, & lots of them aimed at the higher end of the market.Derek Pullem said:
Ford, with mass production & standardization, deliberately, carefully, systematically reduced cost to provide cars for the bottom of the market.
Would that remain true when five million were built to the same standard? (I won't presume ETsDerek Pullem said:
are as numerous as ICTs. )Would that remain true when 200,000 are built every year?
I doubt it.
You keep saying that like some kind of incantation...Johnrankins said:
Except that the number of cars doesn't make a difference, because until the New Deal, intercity roads were by and large muddy and potholed, and cars were slow, so those who'd want to get between cities fast and in comfort would use the train.
Exactly. Which is part of the reason why the OTL Model T had such high ground clearance...MattII said:
There'd been some pressure from cyclists to improve roads; the proliferation of Ts OTL would actually put pressure on state gov'ts to improve roads. Without it, that pressure is much, much less... Indeed, there would be pressure to create supporting systems, like charging stations, & plug-ins at businesses & homes...& the train station.
Don't forget, this is the era of "Horatio's Drive", where a transcontinental drive wasn't in 65 hours, but in 65 days.
So the desire to drive from Detroit to Florida was more a sign of lunacy...& would remain so for about another generation.It occurs to me, this has implications for the creation of the Interstate system. With lower demand for interstate roads (fewer cars on them), would the New Deal turn to rail improvements, instead? Would Ike, too?
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The New Deal might, but I can't see Ike being okay with just rails, too many bottlenecks, unlike with roads. Of course, interstate roads doesn't mean electrics die off (at least, not quickly), trains are still faster, and aeroplanes even more so, so interstate travel by car is still not going to be the preferred way of going long-distance, except by those who want to go places planes and trains can't, and are willing to take their time.
At 20 MPH! Cars do go faster than that you know and people want speed. I make a car that goes 80 MPH you make one that goes 20 MPH which will people buy? Power usage goes up with speed so decreases range. Also you need to divide by 2 as people can't wait 8 hours except when they are asleep at night to refuel.
Yeah, and sooner or later someone is going to use mass production methods to make IC and/or diesel cars and once that happens the price goes down. Ford wasn't an incomparable genius of the age.
Sooner or later someone else will do so. It is the obvious thing to do and mass production was done before Ford. Other people were working on it as well he just happened to be a little quicker and better than others at it.
Would that remain true when five million were built to the same standard? (I won't presume ETs
If not then the advantages are so obvious to you it makes it all the more likely ET will be replaced. After all cars have obvious advantages over horses, particularly when they go faster. You make it sound like Henry Ford was a wizard whose methods no one else could figure out.
You keep saying that like some kind of incantation...
Some things are fundamentally important and can't be wished away and power density is one of them. We aren't talking about what color the car is (Although that seemingly minor change was enough that Ford had to retool his factories when other companies started eating into his sales partly because they came in colors other than black) or other minor details but how far you go with the same speed and carrying capacity.
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How much of that was marketing, & how much production cost? Most IC cars of the era were hand-built, & lots of them aimed at the higher end of the market.
Ford, with mass production & standardization, deliberately, carefully, systematically reduced cost to provide cars for the bottom of the market.
Would that remain true when five million were built to the same standard? (I won't presume ETs
Would that remain true when 200,000 are built every year?
Early Dodge cars were also around the $800 mark - it wasn't until mass production kicked in in the 20's that the price fell by a third.
So when introduced IC mass market cars were 1/3 of the price of equivalent electric cars. Mass production techniques would affect both similarly.
If we apply the same rule to battery costs then the cost of a battery change out is the same as a Model T - difficult to see hiw in the mass market electric cars can compete with IC cars unless gas is expensive (which it was up to WW1 - post WW1 gas was much cheaper)
Apparently at least 15 million people disagreed with you! If the people would have preferred the comfort of trains over the ability to go somewhere at their convenience instead of the train's schedule they wouldn't have bought cars. Your theories about what people would have preferred doesn't prevail over the evidence of what they actually DID prefer OTL.
Exactly. Which is part of the reason why the OTL Model T had such high ground clearance...
There'd been some pressure from cyclists to improve roads; the proliferation of Ts OTL would actually put pressure on state gov'ts to improve roads. Without it, that pressure is much, much less... Indeed, there would be pressure to create supporting systems, like charging stations, & plug-ins at businesses & homes...& the train station.
Don't forget, this is the era of "Horatio's Drive", where a transcontinental drive wasn't in 65 hours, but in 65 days.
It occurs to me, this has implications for the creation of the Interstate system. With lower demand for interstate roads (fewer cars on them), would the New Deal turn to rail improvements, instead? Would Ike, too?
Yet despite all this 15 million cars were sold. Actual facts prevail over theories.
But how were those 15 million car owners actually using them? Simply saying that 15 million owned cars tells me nothing about how they used their cars.
Were they used primarily as Personal Urban Transport? Or did they see a lot of use in Long Distance Travel?
ECs with their usually short range are best suited as Urban Vehicles (unless someone gets the idea very early on that a small generator can be of good use in such cars) while the IC Car can go long distances - assuming the tank is big enough. That to me, is going to play a lot into which form of car would ultimately come out on top.
Considering that most of the country west of the Mississippi and east of California is pretty empty a lot were sold in the country. There were 119,000,000 people in the US at the time. http://www.demographia.com/db-uspop1900.htm Assuming that the average car owner had a wife(The vast majority of car buyers were men at the time) and at least one kid we are talking about 45 million having access to cars. If the average had two kids we are talking at least half the country. They weren't all living in New York and Chicago! If you put in a small generator you might as well go IC as that generator runs on SOMETHING.
Absolutely correct. A long road trip in the 1920's was an adventure, not a way to get someplace. Also, the entire hospitality infrastructure (hotels, restaurants, etc) was entirely geared around proximity to rail lines.
If a cheap, mass produced, electric car was introduced in the early 1900's and marketed as sucessfully as the Model T, I think this could change how intercity and intracity transport evolved in the USA. Most urban areas already had paved or maintained roads, and the short range of an electric car is not an issue. IC engned autos would still be built, but would more likely be bought only by the wealthy for road adventures. Eventually, paved highways would develop, but less widely used. Road networks would be more limited and perhaps less optimized for high-speed travel than modern highway. Passenger rail would last longer as the main way for low-and middle-income people to travel between cities or destinations, with electric cars-for-hire a much more common way to get around at destinations.
This is an excellent point that might just make my previous post somewhat pointless. As noted, the USA was primarily a rural nation in the 1900-1930 period. Farmers needed a way to quickly and effciently get produce to market and mechanization of labor was also inevitable. Even if electric vehicles did well commercially in the cities, IC or diesel work vehicles (tractors, trucks, etc)would come to dominate rural landscapes. Public roads would be improved to assist in this essential commerce. These people are unlikely to want electric private transport vehicles when thgey already are running with gas. Also, family farmers in the early 20th century probably had access to far more disposable income and bank loans than the average urban worker. There is this eventual market for IC-powered private cars that many posters (myself included) tended to forget
Really, then how did at least around HALF the country wind up having access to cars in their family? About half the population was rural with many living far away from towns and not everyone in the city owned cars. We are also talking only about 1927 and car usage went up over time and why is road construction hand-waved away? That was going to happen sooner or later anyways as more and more drivers would want roads.
Presumably the electric car can make its way through the horse crap, cos unless the commercial vehicles are replaced the streets will be swimming in it.
I think you have some of the timings wrong. The roadbuilding starts in the 20's, how else are Bonnie and Clyde going to terrorise the entire Midwest, and think some of the city care vision depends on the city being a fairly high rise on in the first place.
Still the idea of the cool American truck being basically a United Dairies Milk float has a certain appeal
I think you have some of the timings wrong. The roadbuilding starts in the 20's, how else are Bonnie and Clyde going to terrorise the entire Midwest, and think some of the city care vision depends on the city being a fairly high rise on in the first place.
Still the idea of the cool American truck being basically a United Dairies Milk float has a certain appeal