Speaker 1: On Monday, October two, seventeen, General Motors officials announced a
Speaker 1: big move for the company. By twenty twenty three, the
Speaker 1: manufacturer plans to add twenty new vehicles that get their
Speaker 1: power either from electric batteries or from fuel cells. Mark Royce,
Speaker 1: the global product development chief of GM, went even further,
Speaker 1: saying the company believes in an all electric future. I'm
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland, and this is tech stuff Daily. Here's a
Speaker 1: fun fact. Once upon a time, the electric car was
Speaker 1: the present. At that time was the earliest days of
Speaker 1: the automobile. Inventors in the eighteen twenties and eighteen thirties
Speaker 1: began to experiment with electricity as a means to create
Speaker 1: mechanical energy for vehicles. Clever folks in Hungary, the Netherlands,
Speaker 1: and the United States began to build small scale vehicles
Speaker 1: testing electricity's potential, which is sort of a pun I guess.
Speaker 1: In eighteen thirty two, a man named Robert Anderson built
Speaker 1: a horseless carriage that used electricity to power the wheels
Speaker 1: of the gadget. It wasn't particularly powerful or efficient, and
Speaker 1: it would be a few decades before anyone made significant
Speaker 1: strides toward building an electric vehicle that would actually be
Speaker 1: practical for the purposes of transportation. The late nineteenth century
Speaker 1: was a really exciting time for electrical engineers. By nineteen hundred,
Speaker 1: electric cars made up about a third of all the
Speaker 1: vehicles on the road. Around that same time, other inventors
Speaker 1: were working on the internal combustion engine. The first example
Speaker 1: of such a fuel driven engine being used to move
Speaker 1: a vehicle was an eighteen seventy in Vienna, when Siegfried
Speaker 1: Marcus installed a gasoline engine on a hand cart. So
Speaker 1: electric cars had a head start on internal combustion. Why
Speaker 1: then did the world turn to engines running on fossil
Speaker 1: fuels rather than electric vehicles from the start, After all,
Speaker 1: electric cars were comparatively quiet and clean if you look
Speaker 1: at steam or gasoline powered vehicles. Not surprisingly, the deciding
Speaker 1: factor came down to price. When Henry Ford unveiled the
Speaker 1: Model T, which is company could build in larger numbers
Speaker 1: through the new strategy of mass production, the price tag
Speaker 1: was almost a third of what it cost to buy
Speaker 1: an electric roadster. The gas powered cars became more practical
Speaker 1: as regions began to improve the road systems linking towns together.
Speaker 1: It became possible to take a long car trip, one
Speaker 1: that exceeded the driving distance your typical electric vehicle could
Speaker 1: manage on a full battery charge. Fueling stations were a faster,
Speaker 1: more convenient way to extend the vehicle's range than an
Speaker 1: infrastructure that would support a national fleet of electric cars.
Speaker 1: The internal combustion engine took center stage and pushed the
Speaker 1: electric car off to the side. Things are changing now.
Speaker 1: Not only is there more of a support system for
Speaker 1: electric vehicles, we've seen several advances in battery manufacturing that
Speaker 1: are starting to bring prices down. That's one of the
Speaker 1: big goals for Tesla's Giga factories to bring down the
Speaker 1: cost of individual batteries through mass production. That will help
Speaker 1: lower the barrier of adoption for electric vehicles in general.
Speaker 1: General Motors isn't the only manufacturer of traditionally gasoline powered
Speaker 1: vehicles to jump on the electric slide. Volvo has made
Speaker 1: a similar promise, as has the ultra luxury auto manufacturer
Speaker 1: Astid Martin. That's right, in a few years, James Bond
Speaker 1: might be cruising around in an all electric, hand crafted
Speaker 1: luxury sports car and then it will likely blow up somehow.
Speaker 1: General Motors has the distinction of being one of the
Speaker 1: largest auto manufacturers in the world, which is really what
Speaker 1: makes the company's strategy noteworthy. But considering there are many
Speaker 1: regions in the world in serious discussions about banning diesel
Speaker 1: and gasoline vehicles, you could argue this is a self
Speaker 1: preservation move and an attempt to get ahead of that curve.
Speaker 1: In fact, China, the world's largest car market, may move
Speaker 1: to ban such vehicles within a decade or two. It
Speaker 1: could be that General Motors sees the writing on the
Speaker 1: wall and wants to avoid the economic squeeze of having
Speaker 1: fewer markets to sell to. Either way, it's good news
Speaker 1: for electric vehicle fans. One other thing we should mention
Speaker 1: is that while electric cars produced no greenhouse gas emissions,
Speaker 1: you have to take a big picture view of the
Speaker 1: system to really understand the environmental impact of an electric vehicle.
Speaker 1: For one thing, whereas the electricity coming from, if the
Speaker 1: answer is a cold power plant, then the source of
Speaker 1: pollution just shifts from the car to the car's power source.
Speaker 1: Moving to electric vehicles makes the most sense when the
Speaker 1: source of your electricity is a renewable one that doesn't
Speaker 1: depend on fossil fuels. The manufacturing process itself, particularly for
Speaker 1: car batteries, can also be a source of environmental concern.
Speaker 1: So while we should feel pretty good about moving away
Speaker 1: from fossil fuels, which not only can cut down on
Speaker 1: greenhouse gas emissions but also improve national security by reducing
Speaker 1: a nation's dependence upon foreign oil, it doesn't mean we
Speaker 1: should be less vigilant overall. To learn more about how
Speaker 1: electric motors work, why battery technology can't keep up with
Speaker 1: Moore's Law, and everything else related to tech, subscribe to
Speaker 1: the Tech Stuff podcast. It's the big brother to this show,
Speaker 1: and each episode is a deep dive on a tech
Speaker 1: topic that's all for me for now, See you next time.