Electric Cars from The Early 1900s! BETTER THAN THE CHEVY VOLT! lol (Fairbanks Fountainhead Museum)

[@donovandelaney3171]

We need to bring the 1909 Baker Electric Car back into production.

[@noscwoh1]

They'd make great city cars. Modern battery tech and A/C, and they'd sell. Tiller steering may take some getting used to!

[@drphosferrous]

Omg they had charging stations!?

[@tubespring]

Thank you for the informative tour.

[@mrdanforth3744]

The 1917 electric car you show, cost about the same as a V8 Cadillac sedan. The Cadillac carried 7 passengers would cruise at 45 - 50 MPH and had a top speed of 70. The electric was a 4 passenger with a top speed of 25 cruising speed of 15 -20 and range of 70 miles then needed to charge over night. Once they came out with electric starters, and some other improvements that made gas cars easier to drive and more reliable the electric and steam cars could not compete. What makes electrics competitive today, is the new batteries that did not exist 100 years ago or even 25 years ago. And they were only invented because of the demand for better batteries for cell phones and laptops. When the most sophisticated electronic device you have is a transistor radio it's not worth $50 bucks to double battery life but for a $500 cell phone or $2000 laptop it is.

[@eduardobarrezueta5247]

I HAVE BEEN LOOKING FOR THIS CAR FOR YEARS. YAY...

[@wolfdances]

So fascinating.

[@jeffb8562]

We cannot hear the audio recording about the Chevy volt comparison

[@BenHollist]

Jay Leno has a Magnetic Hybrid, in operational condition

[@stormgirl09]

wait electric cars been around for THAT long? wonder why they took so long to finally take off then? i noticed that with a lot of tech....it seems to take decades before it finally becomes a common thing!

[@jeffb8562]

Because it was a lot easier to use oil, and we had slash and still do have tons of it in our country. Pretty sure more than any other country in the world. But no more drilling, no more drilling. Yes Joseph Biden did say those exact words. Also, you can see they are still at least twice as expensive and at least four times as expensive and the model T. With all the technological advances they were making such a surplus of oil, why would they?

[@0nlytruths912]

First Electric Car. kzbin.info/www/bejne/aJaVooaNZ96licU

[@0nlytruths912]

@@jeffb8562 dont be delusional. Electric cars were more efficient. They could go hundreds of miles on 1 Charge!!!

[@drphosferrous]

Batteries were heavy back then and the tesla motor wasn't invented until 1889 or so. More than half the cars were electric but because of the lead-acid batteries and lack of light materials most of them were slow and had a small range. When the highways got built people started taking long drives and caring about charge range. Gas was super cheap back then so people started using gas cars more and more. Diesel engines, which were an old technology by then, were optimized to burn petrol exclusively because that's what was cheapest at the time. Once the gas car manufacturers and oil companies got market dominance, they were able to get rid of investment for rail,public transportation networks,flex fuel,hybrids,and electric cars. Around 1905 they started putting electric starters in gas cars, which made them easy to use like evs. Many auto companies around the world kept making good electric cars but very few made it to market because no one in power wanted the competion. Marketing technology has come so far that they can almost control history but the actual technology of how modern electric cars work is all very old except for battery chemistry which started getting lighter around 1970s-80s.

[@noscwoh1]

For the same reasons as today: weight to power ratio, expensive, slow, and limited range compared to gas engines.

[@noscwoh1]

Your dollar conversions were a little generous. In 1915, a typical house cost $3200. Median household income was about $687 per year. Those early electrics were toys for the very wealthy. Median income today is about $55K. If a $2000 car represented four times the median wage, in today's money it would be closer to a quarter million dollars!

[@kevinloving3141]

These early electric cars cost as much as electric cars today from $30,000 to $60,000. Either electric car technology hasn't changed much or Companies are greedy.

[@unconventionalideas5683]

Modern electric cars have many more expensive features and the technology developments have not resulted in major cost savings. Range is also much longer and charging times much shorter.

[@evanschulz7375]

Very cool. The electric cars were for women because you didn't have to crank them. Interesting to note that modern electric cars are also for women.

[@kevinloving3141]

👍👍👍💪💪👍👍👍

[@777rogerf]

But Teslas are designed to appeal more to boy racers (of all ages).

[@unconventionalideas5683]

I think the Tesla vehicles are not for women, nor is the Porsche Taycan. Gas cars are just increasingly obsolete…

[@jeffb8562]

So to the creator of this video, you live in Alaska and drive a Tesla and question why people don’t want to buy them? If you do live in Alaska I can almost guarantee you you do not drive that thing very much in the winter. Plus how old our power grid keep up with it if everyone owned at least one electric vehicle when the power grid at times cannot keep up with it now.