It’s hard not to look at this and think that battery technology would have progressed far more had the electric car been chosen rather than gas and how that would have meant all the investment into efficiency that the gasoline engine got, batteries and electric motors would have gotten all of that investment instead.
I was trying to find the range of gas cars vs electric in 1912, and it looks like gas cars at that period tended to be a little over 100 miles and the best electrics were 80, with most at 50. It’s too bad the Model T wasn’t electric.
“ While the prototypes seemed to work well enough, in Ford’s view they had a fatal flaw. His development crew had been unable to get the Edison batteries to perform as required. While nickel-iron batteries have a long service life, they are slow to charge, produce less voltage per cell, and as we’ve already seen, are considerably more expensive. To move the project along, the team substituted ordinary lead-acid batteries, and at that point Ford’s patience reached its limit. Without the Edison batteries, the electric flivver no longer had any reason to exist, in Ford’s mind anyway. After a reported expenditure of $1.5 million, mainly in Edison batteries, Henry pulled the plug.”
The crux of the issue is missing on this entire conversation. The role of women, or perceived womanly roles, as this post shows, needs to take into consideration the plight of women during those times. Women's suffrage and the result of which we see in our current times is probably more an influence on the entire chain of thought here, in regards to the incredible advancement we see in gender roles we see now. The range and effectiveness of these vehicles, so desperately described as 'consistently improving with technology', misses the point entirely.
So despite the current state of modern transportation/ technological advancement, we can now all see what apparently matters most to a (now) seemingly useless generation of educated 'opinionated specialists' pitifully beholden to their investors or large banks (this means you Tesla!), the reality of actual utility (such as farm use or manufacturing) can be seen on a grander scale, eg. A mass grid of indentured servants working a non-optimized routine for decades (might have overestimated their capabilities in that sense) vs customized electric tools (think handheld farming, perhaps each attached with it's own horn - not necessarily loud or aggressive but like those you see on clown cars), would they have eventually revolted against the machines/electric tools taking their place? Like the farm equipment of the past, obviously not the current capable tech we have to read about daily (for lack of better offerings), those indentured workers would likely be seen as no different to said farm equipment of the past.
Their only outlet to vent their frustrations at their inabilty to escape their milieu wouldnt amount to much more than dainty gossip, or to take a term from reddit 'circle jerks' (probably with not much to jerk about), but perpetually useless against effecting any actual change to their plight, espousing their views as best they could. So at least some technical know-how would give them a voice!
Workers rights have advanced leagues upon leagues in the past century.
We can only learn from the past and apply those competitive (capitalistic!) tendencies and methodology to building better tech and actively avoid the same pitifalls.
I was trying to find the range of gas cars vs electric in 1912, and it looks like gas cars at that period tended to be a little over 100 miles and the best electrics were 80, with most at 50. It’s too bad the Model T wasn’t electric.
“ While the prototypes seemed to work well enough, in Ford’s view they had a fatal flaw. His development crew had been unable to get the Edison batteries to perform as required. While nickel-iron batteries have a long service life, they are slow to charge, produce less voltage per cell, and as we’ve already seen, are considerably more expensive. To move the project along, the team substituted ordinary lead-acid batteries, and at that point Ford’s patience reached its limit. Without the Edison batteries, the electric flivver no longer had any reason to exist, in Ford’s mind anyway. After a reported expenditure of $1.5 million, mainly in Edison batteries, Henry pulled the plug.”
https://www.macsmotorcitygarage.com/henry-fords-electric-mod...
So despite the current state of modern transportation/ technological advancement, we can now all see what apparently matters most to a (now) seemingly useless generation of educated 'opinionated specialists' pitifully beholden to their investors or large banks (this means you Tesla!), the reality of actual utility (such as farm use or manufacturing) can be seen on a grander scale, eg. A mass grid of indentured servants working a non-optimized routine for decades (might have overestimated their capabilities in that sense) vs customized electric tools (think handheld farming, perhaps each attached with it's own horn - not necessarily loud or aggressive but like those you see on clown cars), would they have eventually revolted against the machines/electric tools taking their place? Like the farm equipment of the past, obviously not the current capable tech we have to read about daily (for lack of better offerings), those indentured workers would likely be seen as no different to said farm equipment of the past.
Their only outlet to vent their frustrations at their inabilty to escape their milieu wouldnt amount to much more than dainty gossip, or to take a term from reddit 'circle jerks' (probably with not much to jerk about), but perpetually useless against effecting any actual change to their plight, espousing their views as best they could. So at least some technical know-how would give them a voice!
Workers rights have advanced leagues upon leagues in the past century.
We can only learn from the past and apply those competitive (capitalistic!) tendencies and methodology to building better tech and actively avoid the same pitifalls.