Powering the Dream_ The History and Promise of Green Technology - Alexis Madrigal [35]
Each of his points was an attack on the gasoline-powered vehicle, which was something like a bomb on wheels. It was loud as a motorcycle at Sturgis, vibrated like a jackhammer, threw off enough heat to burn its passengers, and belched smoke. The competition between electric, gasoline, and steam-powered horseless carriages was real.
At the turn of the century each type of automobile had about a third of the market.7 We can be sure that proponents of each method of propulsion—not to mention the “lovers of horseflesh”—had frothymouthed adherents who would have left nasty comments all over the Internet had such a medium existed. In 1898 one Philadelphia electric vehicle proponent explained, “The electric vehicle possesses so many advantages over those propelled by oil or gas motors that, except in special conditions, where extremely large distances have to be covered without charging facilities, there seems to be little, if any, doubt that the former type will be the one to fill the field.”8
Many nineteenth-century heavyweights agreed, and the Philadelphia duo became a part of the most ambitious effort to create an integrated, nationwide, electric-powered transportation system that the world has ever seen. Morris and Salom’s second Electrobat became the technological basis of the Electric Vehicle Company, the first corporate car concern in the world, the first cab company in New York, and, in the words of automotive historian John B. McRae, the “Monopoly that Missed.”9
The sociotechnological battle between types of cars is one of the most intriguing technological battles in American history. From it, an entire new mobility system swept through the United States. It required new roads and ways of thinking about roads, changing land-use patterns enabled by electrification, fortunate fossil-fuel industry dynamics, particular quasi-Victorian mores, and even the latent anger of the urban working class. The changes were radical and they snowballed throughout the twentieth century, making Americans the most car-dependent people on earth. The system is so deeply entrenched now that developing alternatives seems far-fetched.10
But in the waning years of the nineteenth century, it was not apparent that gasoline-powered cars would dominate. A betting man, otherwise known as an investor, might have put his money on the continuance of two long-term trends: the increasing centralization and the electrification of the nation’s transportation system. Mobility would be sold as a service, he might have wagered. Why would anyone want to buy a two thousand–pound hunk of metal powered by a controlled explosion of a substance known to be as dangerous as TNT? The same Philadelphia electric vehicle fan noted, “The last few years have seen the electric motor replace horses in our street cars, and those who have followed the conception and growth of the electric vehicle prophesy the same revolution in carriages, cabs, wagons, etc, in our cities.”11
Thus, a certain kind of wealthy investor might have seen the electric vehicle as the perfect extension of the electric rail systems that blanketed every sizeable American city.
A NEW COMBINATION
In April 1899 William C. Whitney, a New York financier, walked out of his home on 5th Avenue, bound for Hartford, with a million dollars earmarked to jump-start the creation of a nationwide electric vehicle company.
Whitney was a robber baron, playboy, lover of fine horses, former Secretary of the Navy, and syndicate builder. He married well; his mansion featured a Marie Antoinette room. Whitney’s henchmen purchased ceilings, walls, and chimneys from old European manses and reassembled them in his home. It was a pastiche of the best pre-Industrial crafts remade into a modern home across the street from Central Park. The library was hung with sumptuous velvet tapestries and was paneled in dark oak. Vast expanses