29 Replies to “In 1903 The Electric Car Was 54 Years Old”

  1. Watched a vid comparison between a dad and son.. Dad had new Tesla, son the new Mustang.. I hate the ecar concept and doubly hate to see alleged car people fall for the BS.. Anyhow, the range limit was still the deal breaker.. 260-ish miles for the Mustang and 300-ish for the tesla..But who runs the car to the limits.. I have done enough cross Canaduh! driving to know that those numbers are useless, especially in winter. Besides which, There is soo much money in the hotrod/aftermarket industries, that would disappear… Hate the concept.

    1. My daughter in law’s aunt bought a Tesla (Govt. Grants) and decided to drive from St.Catharines to Montreal..according to one passenger the ride was horrible and half the time was spent trying to find (Free) charging stations. A trip that should have taken 6 -7 hours at most took 15hours. Passengers said never again; she thought it was wonderful because she was saving the planet with a car tax payers helped to pay for; guess you can’t fix stupid…..Steve O

  2. Plus unless you want to wait 8 hrs for a charge you need to go to a super charge station and the cost per km is significantly more than running gas.

    1. “8 hrs for a charge”
      To me the range issue remains the same today as it was in 1903.
      Do I want the freedom of movement and unlimited range offered by a car powered by an ICE or do I want a potentially motionless millstone tethered around my neck?

  3. Speaking as a (part-time) researcher, the greatest attribute a researcher can have is a persistence verging on the pathological.

  4. I received my Drivers license ON my 16th birthday. I wanted a 1972 Triumph TR7 … but could only afford a 1965 VW bug. No matter … I was MOBILE … and FREE!! I took and passed my drivers test ON my 16th birthday. My own kids? Two out of three couldn’t care less about driving. Two of my kids didn’t get their drivers licenses till they went away to college. WTH!? For the longest time, I couldn’t figure it out. But then it occurred to me … my kids were “virtual” driving.

    Whereas I had to actually LEAVE my bedroom to see the world and see other people … to pick up girls … my kids did it with an iPhone, a laptop, and the internets. The iPhone DESTROYED American mobility and FREEDOM … and replaced it with a “virtual” mobility. This is the ONLY reason the American Public is docile and compliant with these SHUT DOWN orders. Everyone can still make “virtual” contact with other humans. We have blithely replaced reality with virtuality.

    This is why the Gen. Zzz’ers like eCars … and self driving cars … because they don’t travel too FAR in the REAL world. The REAL world is scary to these types. The people who FEAR real human contact love eCars with their “safe” limited range. The eCar is a “virtual” car.

    1. Electric cars are great if, like peasants throughout history, you spend your entire life within a day’s walk of where you were born.

    2. Whereas I had to actually LEAVE my bedroom to see the world and see other people

      I’m a counter-example. I haven’t traveled to any exotic locales nor do I have any intention to. But, thanks to amateur radio, I have a bigger perspective of the world than many of my peers who took their “obligatory” trip to Europe.

      I’ve worked stations in or near places that few people have heard of. How about Chicken, Alaska? (Yes, there is such a place and it has an interesting history.) Then there’s Montreal, Wisconsin, often mistaken for some village in Quebec.

      I also worked hams in or around Vancouver, Victoria, and Truro…. as in Vancouver, Washington; Victoria, Kansas; and Truro, Iowa. (Admit it–some of you thought I was referring to places in Canada, didn’t you?)

      One Grey Cup day, I worked a ham who was located in Sachs Harbour on Banks Island. Look up that place and learn something about the Canadian Arctic and that, 200 years ago, Sachs Harbour was like Cape Canaveral, being a staging point for ships attempting to navigate the Northwest Passage.

      And I worked those stations from either my balcony or within walking distance of my apartment, adding geographical and historical details through the Internet.

      1. hi, I’ve been to Chicken, Alaska. The natives named it Chicken because they could not spell Ptarmigan. This is according to the natives at Circle, Alaska, who thought their town was on the artic circle, only to find out they were 50 miles south of the artic circle.
        RWB

        1. Then there was a ham in Coldfoot, Alaska. It was during May of that year and it was freezing here he was.

          According to what I heard, Chicken got its name around the time of the Klondike Gold Rush. People wanted to have a post office, but that needed for the town to become officially incorporated. The original name that was proposed was Ptarmigan, but there was no agreement on how it was supposed to be spelled. Then some wag suggested Chicken because a chicken’s about the same size as as grouse.

          The rest, as is often said, is history.

      3. Many years ago, I worked a station located near Sutter’s Mill, the same one where the California Gold Rush started. I looked up the history of the area. Johann Sutter had one interesting life.

        If I didn’t make contact with that ham, I looked up who Sutter was.

  5. Isn’t the linked article just an argument that electric vehicles are an inevitable part of our future, as the ‘means’ inexorably catch up to the ‘ends’? Along with renewable forms of energy, mRNA vaccines, and a whole host of other things that SDA keeps deriding?

    1. Electric is revisiting a failed means in an effort to match that which internal combustion engines achieved a hundred years ago. The “end” was reliable, on-demand transportation within reach of the ordinary citizen.

      1. No, the “end” is reliable, on-demand, sustainable transportation within reach of the ordinary citizen — using energy sources that, at human scale, are infinite in supply and generate lower levels of pollution to produce and consume. That “end” has not yet been achieved.

        More to the point, humans didn’t stop improving on air travel technology in 1903, and they won’t ever stop, nor did they stop improving on pocket-sized “communicators/personal record players” once the first smartphone was invented.

        Your blog posts about “sparky” electric cars, “stinking giant fans”, etc. have always been arguing the exact opposite of what the author of your linked article is arguing — “we don’t need XYZ” is an argument against innovation itself: “ False fails are seized upon by pessimists as proof that building the future is feckless and that those trying to are fools, but every path to a futuristic end is necessarily littered with many failed means.”

        1. Doug, build me an electric car without using fossil fuels, build me a wind turbine with out mining, smelting and fossil fuels, build me a solar panel without similar inputs. There is no such thing as sustainable anything other than agriculture and trees. Nothing is forever, that includes, suns, planets and solar systems. There still is no such thing as a perpetual motion machine or a free lunch, someone has to push or pay, somewhere along the line.

          1. “Doug, build me an electric car without using fossil fuels, build me a wind turbine with out mining, smelting and fossil fuels, build me a solar panel without similar inputs.”

            So, let’s start by using those non-renewable inputs to build those cars, and then using renewable sources to power them. Immediately you’ve cut down on your total fossil fuel consumption rate.

            Sustainable doesn’t necessarily mean always using only one thing and never using another — it also means recognizing that, as you say, “nothing is forever”, and therefore, let’s deploy our finite resources more intelligently.

            “Nothing is forever, that includes, suns, planets and solar systems.”

            Technically true, which is why I employed the phrase “at human scale”.

          2. “Sustainable” energy which is soooooo inefficient and costly … which drives the middle class into energy poverty … isn’t really “sustainable” for human life. As always … the rich don’t care about the cost increase … the very poor are subsidized by the taxpayer … and the middle class pay BOTH the taxes and the premium energy costs. That formula is unsustainable for the common man. The only tangible benefit is the eco-proletariat get to feeeeeeel as though they have “saved the planet”. Other than that … it’s like hammering nails by hand, not using a nail gun … because arm power is “sustainable” and compressors are not.

  6. Say what you will about Tesla, but when Musk starts up a horse drawn chariot company and has an IPO I’ll be all in. I missed out on the pet rock craze too.

  7. We did not have to be legislated into switching from horses to automobiles. The left has been trying to use that as a reason to go electrical. They just leave the “coercion” part out of their argument.

  8. Time to bring back the steam engine,for steam beat electric and then lost to the Internal combustion Engine.
    Sure you have to preheat your steamer,but that might be a more efficient use of energy than the Electric mobile.
    A friends mother ,who passed away at 90,was listening to her youngest daughter brag about her new Harley,finally she said “Yes dear,thats nice.When I was 20 I rode my Indian to Lake Louise”.
    There were no roads.
    The modern golf cart meets most every need of an urban shopping basket,but the “law” will not permit on road use.
    The “Electric car” meets no practical distance needs,being pure vanity at this point.
    Without the malice and greed of the parasitic overload,government help for the progressive audience,electric will never be cost competitive.
    Of course once they are mandatory,you will see all kinds of conversions.
    The turbo diesel electric being my favourite.

    1. Where we “used” to stay in Florida golf carts are permitted on Gulf Blvd as long as they are equipped with proper lights. Gulf Blvd goes from just below Clearwater to St Pete’s approximately.

    2. Don’t worry, once they outlaw the Internal Combustion Engine, the external combustion engine will make a comeback

    3. JR, “The electric car” meets no practical distance needs, being a pure vanity at this point.”

      Aye, there’s the rub, “being a pure vanity” Just so some idiot can show others how wonderful a human they are!

  9. The Incoming Democratic Party fraudsters: Kamala Harris (grew up in Quebec) and her sidekick Beijing Biden have endorsed the view that they want automobiles to be ‘OBVIATED’ by technological innovation.

    ” …urban centers are transformed into zones shaped by pedestrian activity, technology increasingly obviates the need to own cars, fewer people eat meat, people breathe cleaner air and renewable, clean energy dominates the energy sector.” via the Washington Post

    1. Obviates is a 10 cent word for eliminates but yes the new green plan which Biden and Harris endorses plans to regulate the ICE out of production.

  10. I love that headline “in 1903, the electric car was 54 years old“. Remember that, every time some sh*t c*nt cock wombles in saying “new technology”. I have decided Australian insults are just the best, followed by UK insults.

  11. Lets not forget the endless destruction of the environment excavating billions of tons of
    “rare” earth materials to construct a battery that doesn’t recycle well, lasts 5-7 years and will only take down the road 300+/- km on a single charge.

    Lets put the greenies into the rare earth mines and then back fill them.

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