Opting for gasoline over electricity early on when cars started to become a thing, we were already going electric, but a smear campaign put fear into people’s minds about electric and switched tk gasoline.
Batteries could have been standard for a bit longer, but it seems to me that eventually the need to go faster for longer would have forced combustion engines to be a thing. All they had were lead-acid batteries (or primary cells, but that would be dumb) and new more energy-dense chemistries didn’t show up for a long time after. Maybe they could have found one if they really needed, but it’s a tricky science even today, so I’m skeptical.
It’s possible, I suppose, that infrastructure could have been rolled out for both en mass, but I don’t see an even mix lasting through the whole 20th century. Probably not even past WWII.
Opting for gasoline over electricity early on when cars started to become a thing, we were already going electric, but a smear campaign put fear into people’s minds about electric and switched tk gasoline.
We always have to pander to the capitalists profits, how could the make money with clean electricity???
Batteries could have been standard for a bit longer, but it seems to me that eventually the need to go faster for longer would have forced combustion engines to be a thing. All they had were lead-acid batteries (or primary cells, but that would be dumb) and new more energy-dense chemistries didn’t show up for a long time after. Maybe they could have found one if they really needed, but it’s a tricky science even today, so I’m skeptical.
It’s possible, I suppose, that infrastructure could have been rolled out for both en mass, but I don’t see an even mix lasting through the whole 20th century. Probably not even past WWII.
That’s because of car companies pushing the mentality that everyone needs to drive everywhere… for freedom and shit.
We could have been more like europe is today and have a robust railsystem. Shit, we could have had the best rail system in the world.