Number of words: 499

In 1894, Le Petit journal of Paris organized the world’s first endurance race for “vehicles without horses.” The race was held on the 80-mile route from Paris to Rouen, and the purse was a juicy 5,000 francs. The rivals used all manner of fuels, ranging from steam to electric batteries to compressed air. The winning car used a Daimler engine fired by a strange new fuel that had previously been used chiefly in illumination as a substitute for Whale blubber: oil. Despite the victory, petroleum’s future seemed uncertain back then. Internal-combustion vehicles were seen as noisy, smelly, and dangerous. Indeed, the turn of the century was probably the golden age of the electric car. In 1889, Thomas Edison built the first real electric car, with a rechargeable battery. In 1896, the nation’s first car dealer was selling only electric cars. Two years later, when a spectacular blizzard buried New York City under more than 3 feet of snow, only electric cars could move on the roads. New York’s prime source of transportation, horse-drawn vehicles, was dumping 2.5 million pounds of manure and 60,000 gallons of urine daily on the streets. About fifteen thousand dead horses had to be dragged off the streets each year. 

By this time, a third of all cars were powered by steam, one third by electric, and one-third by gasoline. In 1903, even Henry Ford bought his wife an electric car. 

Why did gasoline emerge victorious? Some conspiracy theorists believe it was the result of devious tactics employed by the oil and battery companies of the age. Edwin Black, an investigative journalist, makes that case in his book Internal Com. bastion. He notes that even Henry Ford began to think that electric cars were better than gasoline ones, joining hands with Thomas Edison to mass-produce electric cars. Alas, that joint venture never came to fruition. Black points an accusing finger at various possible conspiracies, oligopolies, and dirty dealings that might have killed that effort. Black is probably right about vested interests fighting dirty to protect their turf back then much as Big Oil and Detroit do today-but one does not need elaborate conspiracy theories to see why oil triumphed. 

One factor was Spindletop, the raging oil field in Texas. The discovery of plentiful oil in Texas at the turn of the century helped push petroleum and gasoline to the fore. The invention of the electric starter-motor, in 1912, also tipped things in gasoline’s favor. By eliminating the arduous and dangerous starting handle, the electric starter overcame the biggest obstacle to the widespread adoption of the gasoline engine, as it suddenly became easier to use. Soon gasoline’s inherent superiority at motor fuel caused it to prevail. Gasoline has such high energy density that it offered power and durability that electric batteries and coal-fired steam engines could not match using the technology of the day. 

Excerpted from Page 243-244 of ‘Zoom: The Global Race to fuel the car of the future’ by Iain Carson and V Vaitheeswaran