Arctic Tundra Shifts to Source of Climate Pollution, According to New Report Card

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8. The EV has been "invented" and "killed" multiple times

https://www.caranddriver.com/features/g43480930/history-of-electric-cars/


Thomas Edison built an electric car of his own, with a revolutionary new battery technology.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210223-the-battery-invented-120-years-too-soon

The battery invented 120 years before its time
23 February 2021
Allison Hirschlag
Features correspondent


Thomas Edison was the proud owner of an electric car, complete with his own patented nickel-iron battery (Credit: Getty Images)

At the turn of the 20th Century, Thomas Edison invented a battery with the unusual quirk of producing hydrogen. Now, 120 years later, the battery is coming into its own.

Traveling down a gravelly road in West Orange, New Jersey, an electric car sped by pedestrians, some clearly surprised by the vehicle's roomy interior. It travelled at twice the speed of the more conventional vehicles it overtook, stirring up dust that perhaps tickled the noses of the horses pulling carriages steadily along the street.

It was the early 1900s, and the driver of this particular car was Thomas Edison. While electric cars weren't a novelty in the neighborhood, most of them relied on heavy and cumbersome lead-acid batteries. Edison had outfitted his car with a new type of battery that he hoped would soon be powering vehicles throughout the country: a nickel-iron battery. Building on the work of the Swedish inventor Ernst Waldemar Jungner, who first patented a nickel-iron battery in 1899, Edison sought to refine the battery for use in automobiles.

Edison claimed the nickel-iron battery was incredibly resilient, and could be charged twice as fast as lead-acid batteries. He even had a deal in place with Ford Motors to produce this purportedly more efficient electric vehicle.

…

Was it killed by some conspiracy? No, the internal combustion engine offered significant advantages for consumers. But, what if Edison’s car had taken over? Would we have avoided the mess we’re in? Not likely. Think about where the electricity would have come from to power his car… probably from burning coal.


GM’s EV1 wasn’t GM’s first experimentation with EV’s.

The most serious drawbacks to the Electrovair II was its battery technology. The range was limited, and recharging took too long. (Sound familiar?)

Around the same time, GM showed off another concept vehicle, the Electrovan, which ran on the sort of cryogenic hydrogen/oxygen fuel cells used in the NASA Gemini capsule!

The EV1 was not intended to be a product, like the Electrovair II, it was a test bed. Was it possible to make an electric car that consumers would like? Yes! However, GM would have lost their shirt trying to sell them, the technology was too expensive, and the batteries still not up to snuff. GM even experimented with “range extenders” on-board engines which could make up for the lack of all-battery range: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_EV1#Conversions

The key breakthrough that made today's EV’s as attractive as they are was the use of the Lithium-ion battery. That’s what gives them dramatically longer driving ranges, with a reasonable amount of weight.

GM’s work on the EV1 did not go to waste. The EV with range extender was reintroduced as the Volt (they sold a number of them, and lost money on every one.) Next, came the all-electric Bolt, a relatively inexpensive EV, and, once again, GM lost money on every one they sold.

Their latest generation of “Ultium-based” EV’s may change that. GM may at last be able to make EV’s which appeal to customers, and sell them at a profit.

But, what if we had had them in the 1990’s? Would they have prevented the climate crisis? No. In 1965, President Johnson asked his scientific advisors for an assessment of the problem of pollution, and at that time, they warned about an invisible type of pollution, CO₂ and warned him of its potential threat.


We’ve known about the threat for many years, and chosen not to respond to it in any substantial fashion.