Abstract

Recent energy problems in California, combined with gyrating U.S. gasoline prices, have brought renewed attention to the energy efficiency of American automobiles. But this timely study by David Kirsch examines a set of historical questions related to electric vehicles. A century ago electric‐powered vehicles seriously contended in the emerging market for automobiles. The internal combustion engine soon won out, but Kirsch shows that the explanation does not lie in common assumptions about a supposed technical superiority of gasoline engines. In line with the best recent scholarship in the history of technology, this volume demonstrates the complicated web of social, business, and environmental issues that, interwoven with technical factors, produce a more nuanced story of technical change, namely, the market failure of the electric vehicle. Specifically, Kirsch demolishes as simplistic the efforts to pin the failure of the electric car on its battery.Kirsch's history begins with the formation and activities of the Electric Vehicle Company , the leading maker of electric cars. In 1897, EVC emerged in the context of early experiments with electric cars and grew into a large enterprise pursuing a marketing strategy of providing taxi services in large cities. Most automobile pioneers assumed that each power plant would prove best suited for certain activities. Electric‐vehicle promoters embraced this logic of separate spheres, envisioning electric cars as best suited for short urban trips and for women drivers. Unfortunately, drivers of gasoline cars did not respect these boundaries. So even as EVC pioneered ideas such as interchangeable battery racks for cabs, their vehicles slowly lost in the competition. The demise of the company in 1912 was as much organizational as technical, however, for the various branches of the company’s operations failed to follow standard practices designed to produce good service, not to mention profits.Kirsch tells similar stories about other efforts to promote and sell electric vehicles. Thus attempts to link electric cars and central power generating stations went nowhere, despite a seemingly obvious fit. Utilities were attempting to build load, and battery charging at night promised to smooth load curves. Once again, however, Kirsch traces a pattern of missed business opportunities and organizational failures that amplified the technical challenges posed by battery power. In the end, utilities and electric vehicles never developed a suitable working relationship. A similar fate befell electric delivery trucks, even though they survived in a few East Coast cities for a longer time. Finally, efforts to develop an infrastructural base analogous to gasoline filling stations also went nowhere. Taken together, these sections of Kirsch's book are designed to show “might have been” elements to this complicated story.Kirsch offers a number of original ideas as he follows this story along the path of history. He devotes a chapter to the idea, for example, that the electric vehicle actually survives within the internal combustion car, which he sees as a gasoline‐electric hybrid. Beginning with the adoption of the electric starter as a standard element of the “normal” automobile, this hybrid nature was reinforced by the introduction of electric lighting, radios, and other electrically powered accessories. Kirsch also discusses the environmental impact of automobiles and closes with a chapter suggesting that the approaches of industrial ecology offer a promising way of thinking about the technology/environment interface. Overall, he makes an important contribution to the scholarly literature on technical failures, a topic that several historians have recently examined in order to highlight the importance of attention to alternative pathways—successful and otherwise. As has been the case in other such studies, the result is a much more complex, but also much more compelling and plausible, historical account. Kirsch's study is a model of the current work in the history of technology