If electric vehicles (EVs) were cast in a Hollywood movie they would either be the Comeback Kid or Back to the Future. This 1890’s technology gets reintroduced over and over again- and the plot has thickened since 1995. They are now mandated in California and elsewhere as the treatment for greenhouse emissions, less so these days to curb air pollution.
But let’s start with some history. Before this century, EVs were touted as the remedy for air pollution. In an Atlantic magazine article published in 1965 Daniel Carr, a noted research chemist and automotive specialist asks, “Can the electric automobile save us all from asphyxiation?” At the time, Los Angeles and other parts of California were embedded in smog. Pollution from vehicle exhaust hung over the LA Basin like a dirty blanket. The public health impacts were huge. The toxins in the air sent people to hospital emergency rooms with burning eyes and lung disease. Children went on school field-trips with inhalers.
Who Runs the Livery Stable?:
Carr writes that the remedy is in site: first, a catalytic converter that could trap emissions at the tailpipe, reformulations of gasoline, and importantly, electric cars with no tailpipe emissions. He anticipated pushback for these changes from both the oil and gas industries, and from car manufacturers. He attributes this quote to then U.S. Vice President Hubert Humphrey, “You do not put in charge of transportation the man who runs the local livery stable.”
In the 1960s, American cars reached a performance heyday, with V-8 engines, faster acceleration, and “muscle” features. The electric vehicle with its puny lead acid batteries clearly came up short. So, Carr, the Atlantic author, cites areas where battery electric vehicles operate more like neighborhood electric vehicles. With a range of about 100 miles, planners could design new communities around them (at the time Irvine, California) with purpose built paths.
Glimmer of Hybrid:
The Atlantic article from 1965, provides a glimmer of hope. Apparently both Ford and Chrysler were working on hybrid vehicles. A Ford spokesman hints of a hybrid vehicle that ran on batteries in metropolitan areas and switched to gasoline power when out on the highways. The batteries would be recharged by the gasoline engine. Toyota met the hybrid objective in 1997 and BMW developed a small auxiliary engine with the i3. But even today, we don’t have a gasoline engine (with the exception of an external generator) that can recharge the batteries as we drive.
But, the important takeaway from this 1965 article is that it plants the seeds for future government intervention. A high ranking official in the California Department of Public Health, Frank Stead, recommends that no gasoline powered motor vehicle should be allowed in the state after 1980. Twenty-five years later the California Air Resource Board (CARB) legislated a specific percentage of new vehicle sales by zero emission beginning in 1998, increasing to 10% by 2003. Today, sixty years after Mr. Stead’s public health appeal, the CARB board mandates that 35% of new light duty vehicles sold in 2026 be zero-emission, 68% by 2030 and 100% zero emission by 2035. (editorial note: It is unclear what happens if these mandates are not reached and hybrid vehicles may have a bigger role than imagined)
Sixty Years & Back to the Future:
To reach these numbers, The Comeback Kid, the electric vehicle, is still kicking around issues raised back in 1965. Carr’s Atlantic article advises that private auto companies should not be trusted with two pressing social needs: first, the need to introduce vehicles that mitigate tailpipe emissions, and second, the need to redesign vehicles that reduce human injuries and deaths. There was a further problem that he anticipated: the enormous inertia of a vested energy industry (which includes the petroleum companies), and the public inertia and pride of car ownership.
Especially in the West, “ car ownership is a deep-seated question of culture and self-image. . . . The West was won by men on horseback and the private motor is today’s horse.” So, if Western man will not go for mass transportation will he take a more modest horse? “