In December 1996, however, GM bravely launched the world’s first mass-produced electric car, the EV1. Much was promised for, and expected from, this new venture. But after only a few hundred models had been made, and sold only in California, production of the EV1 was halted and the car was mysteriously withdrawn. The debate still rages as to who terminated the EV1 and why – an argument stoked by Chris Paine’s incendiary documentary Who Killed the Electric Car?, which Japanese-owned Sony Pictures gleefully released in 2006. GM’s handling of the debacle showed how little it had learned since Alfred Sloan’s retirement. After vowing publicly to save all the EV1s it had built so far, GM’s officially sanctioned crushing of unsold EV1s was then caught on camera – precisely at the time the firm was promoting its absurd Hummer, one of the least sustainable private vehicles money could buy. The car maker was thus forced into promising a new electric car to take the EV1’s place – a car that was eight years in gestation. And when the Chevrolet Volt did finally appear in 2010 (soon to be joined by its European cousin, the Opel/Vauxhall Ampera), it was not a purely electric vehicle. Technically a hybrid, or at least a hybrid hybrid (or range extender, as GM preferred), it carried a small petrol engine to generate electricity when the battery ran down or when driving at motorway speeds.
Once again, when America faltered, the Japanese stepped in. The electric sensation of 2010–11 was not GM’s Volt/Ampera but the Nissan Leaf, the first mass-produced electric car. The Leaf’s body styling was dull, but its acceleration and suspension were good and it was cheap to charge – if not to buy; even with government grants it cost almost double its petrol equivalent. Yet since the Leaf, like all electric autos, released no harmful exhaust emissions, its high unit cost could be counterbalanced by more altruistic environmental gains.
The development of the Volt and the Leaf prompted rival car makers into a frenzy of activity. From 2010 every major manufacturer issued an electric car (often adapted from an existing petrol-powered model) or a near-electric model equipped with a small, range-extending petrol engine. Nissan’s partner-owner, Renault, unveiled the prototype of its electric Fluence compact executive saloon, boasting an alleged top speed of 84 mph and an impressive 115 mile range; while Renault’s French rival, PSA, unveiled two small, four-seat electric city cars, the Citroën C-Zero and its Peugeot sister, the iOn. In 2010 Daimler AG and German energy giant RWE announced a joint project to develop and manufacture environmentally friendly electric cars for Europe, derived from Mercedes’ Smart and A-and B-Class cars. The same year VW’s chief executive, Martin Winterkorn, told an audience at VW’s California Research Center that by 2013 the company would be producing an electric version of the Up and the Golf, together with plug-in hybrid variants of the Golf and the Jetta. In 2011 even Porsche unveiled a prototype for an all-electric Boxster E, using technology VW had developed for the Golf emotion, demonstrating that electric power and performance were not mutually exclusive. Meanwhile, Ford’s electric Focus was unveiled in America in 2011 and in Europe the following year. The Volt’s European cousin, the Ampera – equipped with a feisty, 1.4 litre extension engine, which provided impressive acceleration – appeared in 2012. BMW launched its pricey i3 electric city car in 2013. Some of these new electric products actually boasted battery ranges of over 200 miles – although most could not manage more than 120 miles.
The obstacles to the widespread use of electric cars, however, still remain formidable. In Britain, for example, the new coalition government of 2010 announced grants of up to £5,000 to encourage the purchase of electric cars, a subsidy that went some way towards defraying the high sticker price. Ministers also promised £20 million to improve charging infrastructure ‘across the UK’, rather than just in London, with transport secretary Philip Hammond noting that 95 per cent of UK car journeys involved distances of twenty-five miles or less. However, electric cars remain largely limited to London and a handful of other cities – much as, in the US, electric vehicles flourish in Southern California and New York City but are rarely found elsewhere. Then in 2011 the British government announced it would not, after all, fund a national network of charging points, hoping that most electric car owners would be able to charge their vehicles at home – which many cannot. Increasingly, those consumers who do buy electric cars see their purchase a luxury rather than a necessity, and supplement it with more conventional means of transport. Until governments address the need for a dense grid of charging stations, the electric car will remain shackled to the home.
With all-electric options still hampered by their limited range, more imaginative car makers sought to create a halfway house for those who want to espouse electric power but do not want to sacrifice the advantages of long-distance travel. Thus was born the hybrid car, powered by a combination of an electric motor and a petrol engine.
Hybrids are actually nothing new. The first genuine dual-fuel vehicle appeared as early as 1901, made by the American George Fisher (although, as with the early electric cars, the heavy, leak-prone, lead-acid battery in Fisher’s automobile soon proved a fatal handicap). To some extent, too, all cars were technically ‘hybrids’ following the installation of Charles Kettering’s electric starter motor to all automobiles after 1912. Modern hybrids tend to combine a small-capacity petrol engine with an electric motor, usually run from a lithium-ion polymer battery. They can cover up to thirty miles using the electric motor, but then the petrol engine – with all its attendant benefits and faults – cuts in.
The first mass-produced hybrid was, inevitably, Japanese. The Toyota Prius was introduced in Japan in 1997 and in the rest of the world four years later. As the world’s first viable hybrid, the Prius captured the imagination in a manner that no dual-fuel vehicles since have been able to match.1 Film stars traded in their vast SUVs and Hummers and turned up for movie premieres in Priuses. Even Brian Griffin drove one in the animated TV series Family Guy. Nevertheless, while it earned worldwide plaudits – among them the European Car of the Year accolade in 2004 – early Priuses sacrificed aesthetics for sustainability, being dowdy, anonymous and utilitarian. It was only with the third generation of 2009, which was far sharper and more aerodynamically styled, that the model was able to challenge its conventional rivals head-on. In 2011 a resurgent Toyota applied the Prius name and shape to an all-electric plug-in model, and introduced a small Lexus hybrid, the CT200, to take on BMW’s and Audi’s compact family cars, at a time when the reputation of the Prius (from which the CT200 took its powertrain) had been dented by the quality scandal. When Kia announced that it would henceforward concentrate on producing small hybrids, Toyota raised the stakes by declaring that all of their cars would feature a dual-fuel power system by 2020.
Across the Pacific, GM and Ford were predictably slow to enter the hybrid market. Early in 2011, Ford’s UK boss candidly admitted that ‘we’re waiting to see how the market reacts to other electric cars’ – an attitude that could see the big American producers fall even further behind their Japanese competitors. The Germans, though, were quick to take up the challenge, applying hybrid technology to luxury and sports models as well as to their more economic products. Audi’s hybrid A6 was unveiled in 2012, two years after Porsche had launched a hybrid sports car, the 918, and a hybrid Cayenne SUV based on its VW cousin, the Touareg. In February 2011 Mercedes promised that every future C-Class car would be able to offer a hybrid version.
While hybrids have proved popular in Britain and America, in the rest of Europe diesel engines still remain very much in vogue; 50 per cent of cars sold in Europe carry diesel engines. Accordingly, while the oil companies have been trying to produce cleaner diesel fuels, car makers have also been working on ways to operate with fewer emissions and greater fuel efficiency. Mercedes’ Bluetec diesel system of 2006 was the first major step in this direction. Daimler-Benz now share this technology with VAG, owners of Audi, Porsche and Volkswagen, and both firms are installing the system in cars destined for the US market. This latter move may be somewhat optimistic, sin
ce in 2011 only 3 per cent of American cars ran on diesel fuel. However, some analysts predict that by 2015 this proportion may be as high as 10 per cent.
Other liquid-fuel alternatives to gasoline have also been cultivated. Shell has developed a gas-to-liquid (GTL) diesel, obtained from natural gas. The gas-to-liquid concept has been known for some time, but has been prohibitively expensive to put into production. Now the imminence of Peak Oil has returned the notion to the top of the ‘to-do’ list.
Ethanol – motor fuel made from plant-derived alcohol – has also been tried, generally in combination with petrol. Some US states now make such blended gasoline compulsory; it is, for example, particularly popular in Texas. In 2010 Ferrari even unveiled a hybrid version of its 599 flagship Gran Turismo which runs on blended fuel. BP, DuPont and British Sugar have evolved their own biofuel, biobutanol, which, its makers claim, has a higher density and is less volatile than ethanol, and can be made from biological (i.e. organic, but non-food) waste.
Biofuels, however, will never prove a long-term solution to the likely exhaustion of the world’s oil reserves. They merely represent a short-term palliative, one that helps – like the hybrid car – to eke out petrol’s future. In many ways, the only real alternative to petrol as a means of fuelling vehicles capable of travelling long distances, and imbued with a high degree of sustainability, is hydrogen. Hydrogen fuel cells (linked not to a heavy battery but to a capacitor) allow for quick acceleration, akin to that of a petrol-powered car, and offer a long range – currently up to 400 miles. Equally importantly, emissions from hydrogen cells comprise nothing more than harmful to the planet than oxidized hydrogen – pure, simple water. And the gas can be extracted from a wide variety of sources, ranging from water itself to natural gas (and even urine). On the minus side, hydrogen extraction is expensive and has environmental impacts, and hydrogen is costly and potentially dangerous to store. But this risk is not significantly greater than that faced by producers and retailers of petrol and diesel. Hydrogen cells represent the best option if we want to continue driving cars. However, governments would need to create a service station infrastructure for the fuelling of hydrogen-powered vehicles for such a system to become viable. The world’s oil companies are not going to do this for them.
In 2002, encouragingly, the Bush administration in America vowed to invest $1.2 billion in hydrogen car research. Six years later it was, unsurprisingly, Honda that unveiled the world’s first hydrogen-cell car, the FCX Clarity. Based on the platform of the Honda Accord, the Clarity featured dashboard monitors for hydrogen consumption, and seat upholstery made from Honda’s patent plant-derived Bio-Fabric. Available for lease in the US, Japan and Europe, the Clarity was sold only in Southern California, where the state government had invested in the necessary fast-fill hydrogen service stations. Honda declared it could start mass-producing vehicles based on the FCX Clarity by 2018 – provided more administrations follow California’s lead. In response, Hyundai Kia announced that it aimed to build one to two thousand hydrogen-fuelled cars per year on the platform of the Kia Exclusive. Even GM tested a hundred Chevrolet Equinox SUV-cum-saloon hydrogen-powered crossovers in 2011–12. After 130 years of the motor car, it looks as if its salvation may lie in the tiny hydrogen atom.
1 Known, more conservatively, as the Dualis in Japan and Australia.
2 Officially, a five-door luxury liftback.
1 In fact, in 2011 VW dropped the New prefix.
2 Officially described in capitals – MINI – in order to distinguish it from its BMC predecessor.
1 Abarth had been founded in 1949 as a niche racing and sports car manufacturer and was bought by Fiat in 1971. Its most famous model was a sporty version of Giacosa’s 500, the Abarth 595.
2 Literally, ‘the small gardener’, although the word has also come to denote the Italian
dish of pickled vegetables.
1 His first name is just ‘J’, and stands for nothing.
1 That same year, Mays was canonized by having his ‘retrofuturist’ car designs made the subject of a major exhibition at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art.
2 Its C6 predecessor was designed in a very American idiom and gained few sales outside the US.
3 Initially designated the Streetka, the model’s name was later abbreviated to just Ka.
1 In 2000 Honda (for once not the innovator) launched a rival in the shape of the Insight, which looked a bit like a 1970s Citroën. In 2011 Honda’s Infiniti marque brought out a hybrid executive saloon, the M35, and a hybrid version of the Jazz supermini.
Further Reading
Below is a selection of useful secondary sources that are widely available in libraries, archives and (in the case of the more recent titles) from book retailers.
Finding the sources for a general history of the motor industry is not as easy as finding information about individual cars. The large car makers have, perhaps understandably, always been very nervous about sharing information, even if it pertains to events that happened decades ago. Many of those company histories that have been allowed to proceed have been somewhat selective in their narrative, clearly guided by commercial concerns. There are, of course splendid exceptions – most notably Robert Lacey’s commanding and beautifully written history of Ford. Others are more evidently products of motor manufacturers’ public relations departments and have enjoyed a correspondingly short shelf-life.
Primary sources for the car industry are notoriously inconsistent, too. In the 1960s the Ford Motor Company famously destroyed private papers belonging to Henry Ford and his son Edsel, some at the personal behest of Henry Ford II. Towards the end of his life, the titan of General Motors, Alfred Sloan, suddenly got cold feet about publishing his ghosted memoirs and tried to prevent the writer GM had hired for that very purpose from going into print. Sloan, like Ford, also left no private papers; those that did survive his death were destroyed by GM executives. William Morris’s papers survive at Nuffield College, Oxford, but they are the exception rather than the rule. In death, as in life, the world’s car makers often remain tantalizingly elusive. Hopefully this book has gone some way towards bringing them back into focus.
General
Martin Adeney, The Motor Makers (London: Collins, 1988).
Michael L. Beyer, The Automobile in American History and Culture (Westport, CN: Greenwood Press, 2001).
David Blanke, Hell on Wheels (Lawrence, KA: University Press of Kansas, 2007).
Malcolm Bobbitt, Austerity Motoring (Dorchester: Veloce, 2003).
Walter J. Boyne, Power Behind the Wheel (London: Conran Octopus, 1988).
John Butman, Car Wars (London: Grafton, 1991).
Sally Clarke, Trust and Power (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
Tony Davis, Naff Motors (London: Century, 2006).
Peter Dunnett, The Decline of the British Motor Industry (London: Croom Helm, 1980).
James J. Flink, The Car Culture (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1975).
…, The Automobile Age (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1988).
David Gartmann, Auto Slavery (Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1986).
…, Auto Opium: A Social History of American Automobile Design (London: Routledge, 1994).
Nick Georgano (ed.), Britain’s Motor Industry: The First Hundred Years (Sparkford: G. A. Foulis, 1995).
… (ed.), The Beaulieu Encyclopaedia of the Automobile, 3 vols (London: HMSO, 2000–1).
Jonathan Glancey, The Car: A History of the Automobile (London: Carlton, 2006).
David Hebb, Wheels on the Road (New York: Collier, 1966).
Paul J. Ingrassia and Joseph B. White, Comeback: The Fall and Rise of the American Automobile Industry (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994).
John Jerome, The Death of the Automobile (New York: Norton, 1972).
Fred Kaplan, 1959: The Year Everything Changed (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley, 2009).
Harold Katz, The Decline of Competition in the Automobile Industry 1920–1940 (New York: A
rno Press, 1977).
…, Shifting Gears (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985).
David Kynaston, Family Britain 1951–7 (London: Bloomsbury, 2007).
…, Austerity Britain 1945–51 (London: Bloomsbury, 2009).
Brian Ladd, Autophobia (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008).
James J. Laux, The European Auto Industry (Boston: Twayne, 1992).
Wayne Lewchuck, American Technology and the British Vehicle Industry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986).
Peter Ling, America and the Automobile (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1989).
Jonathan Mantle, Car Wars (New York: Arcade, 1995).
Micheline Maynard, The End of Detroit (New York: Doubleday, 2003).
Mariana Mazzucato, Advertising and the Evolution of Market Structure in the US Car Industry (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 2001).
Daniel Miller (ed.), Car Cultures (Oxford: Berg, 2001).
Ralph Nader, Unsafe at Any Speed (New York: Grossman, 1965).
Julian Pettifer and Nigel Turner, Automania (London: Collins, 1984).
Anthony Pritchard, British Family Cars of the 1950s and 60s (Oxford: Shire, 2009).
John B. Rae, American Automobile (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965).
…, The American Automobile Industry (Boston: Twayne, 1984).
James Ruppert, The British Car Industry: Our Part in its Downfall (Maidenhead: Foresight Publications, 2008).
Emma Rothschild, Paradise Lost: The Decline of the Auto-Industrial Age (New York: Random House, 1973).
Samuel Saul, ‘The Motor Industry in Britain to 1914’, Business History, 5.1 (December 1962).
Michael Sedgwick, The Motor Car 1946–56 (London: Batsford, 1979).
L. J. K. Setright,Drive On! (London: Granta, 2003).
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