I wouldn’t mind the idea of everything going digital. So long as we actually own the digital copies we buy. So long also as we are able to continually access said digital copies. We wouldn’t be having this physical vs digital debate going on for so long, if the practices of what companies like Sony and other media companies have been going about with handling digitally purchased content.
It’s a very stupid easy of a solution that has been continually fumbled time and time again. Because greed got in the way.
That wasn’t anything nefarious at the time.
There were a number of energy sources used for the early cars. Nobody new which would be best. Although wood fired boilers were obviously not going to last.
It wasn’t until ground oil was discovered and quickly became the cheapest option did they all adopt that. Battery cars at the time were only good for a dozen miles, and way more expensive. So yah oil was the obvious choice for 2nd gen vehicles.
Lemmy hates to hear it, but there’s a shitload of energy in a gallon of refined oil, and there’s shitloads of oil. I don’t see anyway we got where we are today without it. Now it’s past time to cut it off.
Gasoline cars made industrialists money, but the rest of your assumptions are incorrect.
There were several electric vehicles in production in the early 1900s, 20-30 years after gasoline vehicles had been developed, popular because they were already more comfortable, reliable, cleaner and easier to fix and maintain, and would become more so as production improved.
Oil barons systematically bought out and destroyed all electric vehicle companies throughout the late 1800s and early 1900s.
Until industrialists systematically destroyed electric vehicle infrastructure, the future of the automobile was either stagnant, largely unimprovable combustion engine vehicles that the world was forced into for a century, or electric vehicles which are much more easily improved but because they last longer and consume less fuel, don’t make exploitatatuve industrialists as much money.
If fuel companies and industrial capitalists hadn’t blocked and destroyed the potential of electric vehicles 100 years ago, EV technology would be decades ahead of where it is now and automobile exhaust and noise pollution would never have been a global issue in the first place.
After the turn of the 20th, electric vehicles were still a niche novelty marketed exclusively to wealthy women. And at a time when women needed a man to open a bank account for them. If you were stuck marketing to women in 1908, its because you had literally no other market for your product.
They lacked the power or range to actually do anything meaningful. The internal combustion engine while noisy, smelly, dirty, and complex, was able to do actual work. By 1920 a whole trucking industry suddenly existed, tractors and industrial farm equipment were becoming common. Engines were doing things electric vehicles couldn’t begin to match for decades more.
Like I said, cheep oil from the ground is what made all the difference. If that discovery was 30-50 later maybe electric could have gotten a foothold and become something. But that’s only a maybe.
Any shenanigans the early oil companies did (and there was much shenanigans) was unwarranted. Even with a perfectly fair market electric vehicles couldn’t compete at the time.
By the way, this is comming from someone who’s been drooling over electrics since the GM EV1, and loves his year old Ioniq 5. Today electric is superior in every way. 100 years ago that just wasn’t the case.
Oohhh boy. Cheaper oil didn’t eliminate automobiles, profit motive did, which is the critical difference here.
The “shenanigans” you’re referring to was the systematic dismantling of a superior vehicle industry that threatened entrenched interests.
If we pretend you’re correct and gasoline was invented after electric vehicles, you’d still be missing the point of this post.
The question is which inventions users would appreciate more if they had been implemented correctly.
If oil barons hadn’t deliberately killed the electric car in order to protect their investment in and dedication to crude oil as a fuel, I wouldn’t mind automobiles so much.
Because industrialists did collude to block the development of the electric car, streets have been loud and dirty and motor oil has been poisoning the earth for a century when none of that ever needed to happen.
Cheep oil enabled the wide spread use of automobiles. I don’t know why you’d think anyone said it eliminated them.
Not what I’m referring to. See Killers of the Flower Moon (2023) for details.
My point is, at the time Electric wasn’t superior. It was cleaner, easier, and nicer to operate, but far less capable. Hense inferior at the time.
The first “Electric Carrage” was invented in the 1830s. The first mas market version in the US was in 1890.
The process for refineing crude oil into other products such as gasoline, was invented in 1891.
First: The electric was made my industrialists also. There were no noble “good guys” in this environment.
Second: My point again, is it didn’t matter that the oil industrialists screwed over the electric industrialists. Electric at the time couldn’t begin to compete with internal combustion engines.
Your “point” is that you don’t understand the question or answer.
Let me try to explain once more.
The question asks what do you wish was executed better so we’d have it today.
Your answer is early EVs at the turn of the 20th century.
My critique is that they executed as well as they could, it still wasn’t good enough.
Does that make sense now?
Your assertion rhat stagnant technology and unsustainable fuel is a better foundation for the automobile industry than dynamic, improvable technology and renewable resources makes the exact same amount of nonsense it did the first time.
The oil barons applaud your devotion to grime.
nope, not at all. read.
Then nobody knows what you’re talking about. I do it know what to say
And we could have charged those electric vehicles with… checks notes… burned fossil fuels, just to lose efficiency for giggles.
Some y’all’s understanding of capitalism is straight childish. “There was always a better solution, but the evil capitalists held it down!”
Know why the world went with burning oil? Because it was the most bang (heh) for the buck. That simple. No evil men smoking cigars in back rooms required. Now we have better tech and can move on, but that wasn’t the case until recently.
Yes, in your utopian little world, we all could have worked together for the better solutions from the start. Oh, wait… would those solutions have cost more and consumers would have fucked those off? It must be an evil plot! (Though is mostly is at present time.)
Funny enough, I made the perfect meme last year to describe this conversation.
Yes, the incredibly efficient ICE that loses 70%+ of generated power at peak efficiency, you thick-headed, blind child.
The rapid advance of battery technology in just the last decade is one example of what the global fuel industry could have been, and electric cars would have kickstarted that.
You are picking at your mental scabs while ignoring the point of the post.
I guess thanks for making people who know anything about anything feels very smart in comparison. Your myopic ignorance is an entertaining public service.
You seem fun