Hi guys, ever since i fell in love with Tesla motors i started wondering what exactly gave the popularity of internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicle, this led me to research and the research led me to some remarkable finding as i found out that in the 1900's the figures in percentage for vehicles were:
electric cars - 40%
steam vehicles -38%
gasoline vehicle - 22%
Thomas Davenport invented the first practical electric car in 1835 however cars could only be driven in the city cause of the roads and other inherent problems with cars during that period ...like the fact that cars were extremely expensive. Hence came Henry Ford who figured out that for vehicles to get mass adoption they had to be more affordable and more convenient and so it would need to be put through an assembly line just like the way other mass produced goods were during those days and so he opted to produce the ICE vehicles for these reasons and not that they weren't without their problems but it was greatly adopted because it was cheaper. And he was undoubtedly very able to do this as the model t (the first mass produced vehicle) was significantly cheaper than its counterparts:
electric vehicle - $1750
model t - $260
Thomas Edison and Henry Ford worked on mass producing electric vehicles as Thomas believed he had figured out how to make batteries and thus electric cars viable not to mention that Thomas was a mentor to Ford. It is however believed that lack of capable battery technology along with some other technical and production issues did not allow this to come into reality
Then came General motors in a failed attempt tried to bring EVs into the market in 1991 but we all know all too well how much of a failure that was
Then entered my true love ...Tesla motors into the market and now everything has changed and we are all looking towards a greener zero emissions future. Hurray to that!!!!
