Business Tools Blog

What?!!!  I thought, as I read the Mental Floss post yesterday. The Electric Shock: Electric Cars Pre-Date the Civil War!  

The first electric cars hit the scene way back in the early 1830s, 30 years before the Civil War (for the record, they’re also older than the Eiffel Tower, Joan Rivers and sliced bread). In fact, the electric car was actually the first popularized car. In the year 1900, of the 4,192 cars produced in the United States, 28% of them were electric. And in 1903 electric cars outsold gasoline powered cars, representing about 1/3 of the cars found on the road in New York City, Boston, and Chicago.

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So what exactly happened to cars? The decline of the electric can be attributed to two individuals – Henry Ford and Anthony Lucas. Henry Ford came into the picture in 1903 and with his quote “I will build a car for the great multitude,” he did just that. In 1908 he perfected the mass production of internal combustion engines. The Model T could be assembled in only ninety-three minutes! Of course, that meant gasoline powered cars became more affordable for consumers. In 1912, an electric car sold for $1750 while a gas guzzler sold for $650. Additionally, Cadillac simplified the once dangerous and difficult task of starting up the internal combustion engine. As cities grew, the need for longer-distance driving grew and batteries just didn’t cut it. Electric car sales peaked in 1912, and declined to obsoleteness shortly thereafter.

Of course, assembly lines and combustion engines weren’t the only reason that the electric went extinct; oil also played a huge factor. When Anthony Lucas struck black gold at Spindletop in 1901, US oil production tripled overnight, making gasoline extremely abundant and affordable. This only boosted the case for gas powered internal combustion engines.

So why would I bring this up in a Business Tools Blog? 

Because … ideas that spread when coupled with innovation win.  Henry Ford didn’t make incremental improvements on the electirc car idea, he took advantage of a new idea and invited consumers to change their behavior.  With oil cheap, a new combustion engine, and the “assembly line” ideavirus, he not only changed the auto business, he also erased the history of electric cars from our collective memory.