Defending the Electric Car
A 1904 letter takes us to the past and into the future of electric cars
Having the normal performances of my electric car doubted on many occasions, and having the threadbare expression that “an electric is all right but you can’t go anywhere with it,” thrown at me repeatedly, I decided to go somewhere with it, in the full sense of the word.
This is how an early electric car enthusiast Mr Dumont starts his letter, dated 1904, in which he describes his experience of touring in an electric car. The aim was to prove wrong all the skeptics who doubted that an electric could take you on a 300-mile journey, climb hills, and stay in one piece while venturing through the country-side. Dumont’s letter was published in the first automotive magazine in English language, The Horseless Age. For a 114-year-old letter, it feels astoundingly contemporary in its enthusiasm for electrics, while the writer’s voice resembles discussions you can read and hear nowadays among electric (wanna-be) drivers. Some of the questions, priorities, concerns stayed the same, but as I found, much has changed, as well.
Just like us, Mr Dumont lived in exciting times for electric cars. Back in 1904, the internal-combustion engine wasn’t crowned, yet, and the electric car was on the ascent to its golden years. Eight years after Mr Dumont’s letter was published, there would be 30,000 electrics on the US roads, with two thirds accounting for private vehicles. The enthusiasm around electric cars was bolstered by the exciting momentum of many electrical firsts. Among others, in 1904 John Fleming patented the first diode, and two years later Lee de Forest invented the triode starting the age of electronics. While it would take another nineteen years for half of all U.S. homes to have electric power, the excitement surrounding electricity was palpable. It wasn’t difficult to believe that everything would run on electricity for a long time to come, even the horseless carriage.
Yet, a cloud of doubt obfuscated the early developments of the electric car. The technology wasn’t deemed reliable, the battery was too heavy, and much of the progress achieved in the lab stayed there. David Kirsh cites an article from the late 19th century in his book Electric Vehicle and the Burden of History, saying that despite the improvements, “the storage battery “will spatter, fume, give out on the road, leak, buckle, disintegrate, corrode, short-circuit, and do many other undesirable things under the severe conditions of automobile work”. Some fifteen years after Mr Dumont published his letter, around 1920s, it would become clear that electrics were losing against the internal-combustion engine (ICE), and the more affordable, reliable, mass-produced fossil fuel-powered cars. As the winner gets to shape the way history is told, ICE’s dominance left little space for us to hear the stories of early electric car drivers who loved their vehicles. That’s where I found the charm of this letter. And the timing is right!
The new electric age we’re witnessing, the rise of electric cars, and electric vehicles more broadly, comes with crucial advances in battery technology, as well as much-needed push by the car makers and governments. I would like to think that Mr Dumont would be excited to see the pushback against the ICE and the negative externalities of its dominance. With that in mind, I will share parts of his letter here, as well as some thoughts about the future of mobility that were inspired by this encounter with the ghost from the past.
Range anxiety, anyone?
We left New York by the way of South Ferry to Staten Island and traveled along the shore of Staten Island to Elizabethport on the Jersey side, and then to Elizabeth, Plainfield, Bound Brook and Somerville. Here it was necessary for us to take our first charge, as we were about 40 miles from the starting point, and had traveled the limit of our car on one charge. Charging current was obtained from the Somerset Lighting Company, whose power plant is located at Raritan, N.J. about a mile from Somerville, and who are equipped to charge all types of electric cars. […] We might mention here that it is always possible to charge an electric car at any electric light plant.
Forty miles. Forty miles on a single charge would satisfy the needs of an average American commuter today. Still, range anxiety remains the number one concern of car customers nowadays, and it is more common among people who don’t own an electric than among owners. Part of the range anxiety is the assumption that there is not enough charging infrastructure—while in reality the infrastructure growth is closely tied to the growth of electrics on the road.
In 1904, availability of the charging stations was widespread, according to the letter. As diversification was among the major aspects of power stations’ strategy for increasing the consumption of electricity, car enthusiasts were just the customers they needed. The vehicles consumed large loads of electricity and could be charged during idle night hours. Electric generating companies would later become members of The Electric Vehicle Association of America, formed in 1909. As a result, central stations offered reduced rates for charging, and their managers were encouraged to use electric cars for their own transportation. Mr Dumont also acknowledges that almost every town has a power plant that will serve as a charging station. In those that don’t, he says,
you will likely excite as much curiosity as a circus.
Ultimately, his advice is to learn about your route before starting a longer journey—advice still sound today:
When in strange country it is advisable to inquire the distance to the next town where you figure on charging your car, asking several persons and then striking an average of the distances named. The voltammeter in your car is a good gauge of the charge in your battery, and is placed in a position so you can read it from the seat.
Win a battle, lose a war
Racing. It’s a big thing now, and it was a big thing in 1900s. Racing was an important element of early car development. It was a chance for innovators and companies to show off new models and challenge their competitors.
An electric car won the first ever car race in 1896, but despite this early success, race coverage in The Horseless Age reveals that in late 1904 gasoline cars were the favored contestants. They were faster and safer than their electric counterparts on the race tracks. Racing was the first victory and the first failure of electric cars.
While disappointing in the race tracks, electric cars still wonderfully served the needs of the city life, on flat roads. Because of this, they were perceived as perfect vehicles for ladies and doctors: clean, simple and cheaper substitute to the horse carriage.
In his letter, Mr Dumont is trying to encourage people to see past urban transport, and give the electric a chance in long-distance travel in the country-side. To be ready for this feat, a car had to offer more than just speed and stable flat-ground navigation—it had to effortlessly climb hills, which Mr Dumont enthusiastically describes his could, on a couple of occasions:
From Lambertville to Doylestown, Pa., the road is a first class pike, with steep hills, which our electric mounted as if it enjoyed the effort.
[…]
At Easton the natives could hardly believe it possible that we had made the run from Doylestown with our electric over the mountainous route, as the gasoline cars going to Doylestown usually take the river route, which is more level.
And going over the Schooley’s Mountain in New Jersey (1,200ft or 366m), Mr Dumont writes:
Our sturdy little car made this long, severe climb as if it were a regular thing to do.
The big switch
In one of the most dramatic parts of the letter, Mr Dumont describes how people new to the cars reacted to the sight of him:
The people traveling on this piece of road by horse drawn conveyance seemed rather in terror of automobiles, and several times when we were still fully a quarter of a mile from an approaching conveyance there was a commotion among the passengers as if a bomb had burst in the midst, and they would shoot out of carriage in all directions and pull the horse over to the side of the road. Usually when we passed the horse would not so much as notice us, showing that the driver was much more alarmed than the beast.
We might giggle at this event now, but the switch in thinking that normalized cars on the roads took time, experience and a change in context. We need to take this into account when creating and predicting the electric vehicle future in the 21st century. Autonomous vehicles even more so.
Thinking about Why are we more ready for the electric car than Mr Dumont’s generation was? takes me to one of my favorite pieces by the amazing Katja Grace—her meditation on why innovation took so long across the human history. One of the prerequisites for innovation that Katja writes about are the ‘unimaginably basic concepts’, or foundational presentations of the world we live in. Technological improvements and coolness aside, one of the reasons why electric vehicles are here to stay in the decades ahead is because of the basic concept of environmental distress caused by transportation emissions. Even though it was possible to drive an electric in 1904, the basic concept of environmental benefits didn’t play into the purchasing or investment decision, thus the choice to improve and keep ICE as a more efficient and safe technology was a no-brainer. Despite there being a recognition of human impact on the climate in the early 20th century, saving the planet by driving a car that didn’t emit poisonous exhaust simply wasn’t a relevant lifestyle or investment choice. Furthermore, the scale at which vehicles were used at the time was so limited that it didn’t raise immediate anxiety. Nowadays, the environmental well-being is not only a basic concept for a growing number of customers, but it’s seen as a threat and opportunity by incumbent car companies, which are forced to commit to electrification to remain viable.
An important advantage of the current electrification uptake is that the shift towards electric cars is part of the unfolding of a greater transportation revolution. Electrification, autonomy and ride-sharing will raise the economic incentives to ditch personal fossil fuel-reliant cars. Ride-sharing is already perceived as one of the greatest threats to oil demand. Not only does it enable the switch from car ownership to car-as-a-service (or even vehicle-as-a-service, including bikes and scooters) at scale, but it also has the potential to amortize upfront fixed costs of electric vehicles with greater utilization of a single car. Boston Consulting Group estimates that electric autonomous shared cars could cut the cost of personal mobility by around 50% in large cities in the next decade.
ICEs still run flawlessly, fit everyone’s bill, and unless a burning need to cut emissions forces electrification, as is the case with China, the shift will take time and effort. But we’re on a good path: we’ll see the unsubsidized upfront cost of electrics become competitive in 2024, incentivising a steady increase in sales. At that point, there will be no going back.
I’ll leave the final word to Mr Dumont:
The electric car is not a touring car in the full sense of the term, but there are a large number of people who have not time for touring but who could get keen enjoyment out of an electric, and would find, if they kept a daily mileage account for the twelve months of the year, that 90 per cent of their pleasure rides are over distances of from 10 to 25 miles. A good electric vehicle has more points to be admired than most critics care to acknowledge.
Many thanks to Jay Boeri who kindly opened the doors of his treasured collection for me, where I found several tomes of The Horseless Age. Thanks to Gerard Huff, Olaf Sakkers and Josh Bushueff for invaluable feedback that helped shape this piece.
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P.S. Have thoughts on how I could improve this piece and my writing? Please let me know at marija.gavrilov@gmail.com.
