Actually, we had electric cars 100 years ago as well. The only reason that gas powered cars were more popular than electric cars was because gasoline was more prevalent than electricity was at the time. Henry Ford was targeting his automobiles at Farmers, which constituted 90% of the population of the United States. Electric light was something new and available only in the city, so farmers still used kerosene lamps. Gasoline was a by-product of kerosene at the time, so why not power auto-mobiles with a discarded industrial waste product, rather than something newfangled that only city slickers had access to? Henry Ford may have sold gasoline powered cars to his customers, but his own wife drove an electric car. Today of course, the reverse is true. Less than 10% of the United States are farmers, electricity is ubiquitous, gasoline is expensive, and we are running out of fossil fuels.
Posted on: Tue, 19 Aug 2014 21:10:36 +0000