Hulten on Mom, _The Electric Vehicle: Technology and Expectations in the Automobile Age_

[eh.net-review at eh.net]

Published by EH.NET (March 2007)

Gijs Mom, _The Electric Vehicle: Technology and Expectations in the 
Automobile Age_. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004. 
xiii + 423 pp. $55 (hardcover), ISBN: 0-8018-7138-2.

Reviewed for EH.NET by Staffan Hultén, Department of Marketing and 
Strategy, Stockholm School of Economics.


The early history of the automobile and the battle between electric, 
steam-powered and gasoline cars has resulted in numerous interesting 
and thought-provoking articles and books. Among this research have 
been impressive case studies -- for example, Schallenberg's book on 
the evolution of battery technology, Kirsch's thesis on the electric 
car and Scharff's book on gender and the early evolution of the car 
-- of how social and economic factors intervene in the technological 
selection process. Another type of research has been much more 
speculative. We have on the one hand the often repeated claim by 
Arthur that steam power, and maybe even electric power, could have 
become the dominating power source for the automobile and on the 
other hand Leibowitz and Margolis's total rejection of such a 
possibility. Gijs Mom's book, _The Electric Vehicle: Technology and 
Expectations in the Automobile Age_, is an impressive empirical study 
that helps resolve this debate.

The author has brought together a hitherto unknown collection of 
cases of electric vehicle usage from 1881 to 1925 and he also gives a 
sketchy overview of the subsequent evolution of electric cars to the 
1970s. Reading the book, I was struck with how many chances and how 
much support the electric vehicles got over time. There occurred, in 
all probability, not a selection failure as suggested by Kirsch on 
EH.Net in 1996: "The failure of the EVC, I argue, was not 
pre-ordained by its choice of technology. Rather ... it MIGHT HAVE 
SUCCEEDED under different circumstances, and if it had, it might have 
enrolled a host of other supporting institutions (electric utilities, 
the insurance underwriters, fleet vehicles owners, battery exchange 
providers [in place of gas stations], etc.)." Mom's study shows that 
more than one actor tried to remedy a perceived malfunctioning market 
process and give electric power preferential treatment. In addition 
to the fairly well-known premature investments in electric taxi-cab 
fleets at the end of the nineteenth century in the U.S., Mom adds 
example after example where electric cars were given unfair 
advantages by local authorities. In German cities like Bremen and 
Hamburg gasoline taxicabs were banned by local authorities around 
1910 to the benefit of electric taxicabs. In Berlin a prospective 
gasoline taxicab owner had in 1911 to hand in ten horse-cab licenses 
while a few years later a license for an electric taxicab only 
demanded two horse-cab licenses.

Mom's book is not an easy read. It is packed with too much detail 
brought together in an implicit unfolding story, that when it ends 
leaves more questions than answers. One example is Mom's treatment of 
the development of the taxicab market in Chapter 4. He presents 
different case studies with different levels of analysis and 
different types of data -- in Paris he presents the evolution of the 
whole market, in Bremen and Hamburg stories about taxicab firms and 
in Holland detailed statistical data about revenues and daily route 
length -- which makes it extremely difficult to compare the material. 
It comes as no surprise that his conclusions from the chapter are 
vague, general and not argued before. Take, for example, the 
conclusion on page 172: "Why then could the electric car not extend 
its position (Berlin) or maintain it (Bremen, Hamburg and Amsterdam)? 
Was it not the ideal 'crisis car' and was it not cheaper to maintain 
in a large fleet than a gasoline cab? The conclusion can only be that 
the gasoline cab had an important _extra function_, which widened its 
potential field of application considerably: that of the (paid) 
touring trip outside the city as well as the higher speed that 
accompanied it." The touring idea is not detailed city by city in the 
chapter. We have no idea based on the material if this was the reason 
for the electric cab failure. The hint that electrics were cheaper is 
far from conclusive and my impression is that the author uses 
different yardsticks when comparing electric with gasoline taxicabs. 
He notes that you "only" got 260 effective days of operation with a 
gasoline car (p. 140), but when the electric cabs reached 213 
operating days per car in 1907 "nothing seemed to stand in the way of 
a functional taxicab fleet" (p. 145). My guess would be that simple 
economics and good management preferred "only" 260 days before an 
increase to 213 days. Another quirky thing in this chapter is the 
launch of an extremely powerful conclusion without any empirical 
support before the chapter starts: "Largely neglected by automotive 
historiography, it was under the guise of the taxicab that gasoline 
engine propulsion entered into the urban application field and it was 
in this field that the gasoline vehicle learned to become 'civilized' 
and throw off its image of unreliability" (p. 131). This may be true 
but nothing in the chapter casts light on why this is the case. No 
comparative data of different modes of gasoline car use is analyzed, 
and no material on different gasoline cars is presented. It may be 
the case that "automotive historiography" has neglected this, but it 
shares this neglect with Mom himself. To pretend to know is not the 
same as to know.

Maybe it is Mom's appetite for empirical knowledge that accounts for 
errors like the above, but this fault is at the same time one of the 
merits of the book. I mentioned earlier his documentation of seldom 
treated case material. In Chapter 5 and 6 he documents skillfully how 
electric motors were used in commercial vehicles and trucks. Electric 
buses were well diffused in Europe, often using a contact wire. To 
this case Mom adds numerous others and in particular the German 
experience with electric fire engines. The electric propulsion of 
these vehicles too a high extent depended on the entrepreneurial fire 
chief Maximilian Reichel. Here the story ends with the First World 
War, and the advantages of gasoline engines over electric motors on 
the battle field.

Mom concludes with two appendices (one is a note on method) that 
outline a theoretical framework. This is an unusual way of knowledge 
construction, as this section makes explicit what has been implicit 
in the analysis in the different cases. More interesting is his 
speculative epilogue that looks at different possible "failure 
factors": socio-cultural or gender, the battery (and the tire), 
infrastructure, and competing technologies. For reasons not clarified 
in the text, the discussion of the failure factors builds on new 
material and speculations.

On the question of socio-cultural aspects he agrees with Schiffer and 
Scharff on gender and cars, claiming that "both approaches contain 
elements that match the conclusions of this study" (p. 278), 
Regardless of this he takes issue with them and belittles their 
research. "Added to the complete lack of data, these shortcomings 
have led to highly speculative analyses that easily assume the 
character of a religious dispute" (ibid). To prove his point, he 
presents some new anecdotal evidence, a necessity since this hasn't 
been treated in the book. For example an advertisement entitled "The 
Gentleman's Town Car" is pretended to support the claim that: "Too 
late did the electric industry realize its pitfalls of focusing on 
women as a marketing strategy" (p. 283).

The battery and the tire problems draw extensively on material 
presented earlier in the book. In the treatment of these factors Mom 
wants both to accept them as failure factors and reject them as 
failure factors. The limited range which blocked touring -- critical 
according to himself in the success of the gasoline taxicab -- is no 
longer critical because: "... the decisive battle was fought in the 
city, on territory where the advantages of electric propulsion were 
undeniable." He also notes that when gasoline cars were forbidden to 
compete electric cars flourished (p. 285-86). Such thought processes 
certainly pave the way for another explanation. "So, if the 
second-generation battery has indeed contributed to the 'failure' of 
the electric car, ... it was due to its antimachine character, which 
did not fit in the dominant technical culture and certainly not in 
the emerging culture of the gasoline car" (p. 288).

Infrastructure as a failure factor gives Mom plenty of problems. 
Infrastructural need seems to be an important criterion for judging 
the capacity of a car to develop (p. 291). We also get the 
information that many believe that the expansion of the road networks 
before and after the First World War were crucial for the success of 
the automobile (p. 292). But, this is too simple for Mom. The 
relationship is not at all clear-cut. It was trucks that needed 
better roads, not cars. The electric car didn't lose the battle 
because of benefiting less from inter-city roads.

Finally on the issue on how the technology of electric vehicles 
interacted with the technology of gasoline cars Mom launches the idea 
that gasoline cars gained more from this interaction than electric 
cars. It is impossible to tell if this is a correct assessment. He 
points at different technology transfers but his list is far from 
conclusive and convincing. He presents a picture in which the 
gasoline car internalized all the advantages of the electric car 
without asking himself why the electric car entrepreneurs didn't 
retaliate by internalizing all the advantages of the gasoline car.

Despite all its pitfalls, Mom's book leaves very little to fantasize 
about for electric vehicle enthusiasts. There was no missed 
opportunity in the early days of the automobile, the electric vehicle 
disappeared from most usage areas because at the time and given 
existing preferences it represented an inferior technology to the 
gasoline car. It is possible that a new take on the electric vehicle 
question could include co-evolutionary aspects of automobile 
development. One critical issue would be whether most of a rapidly 
advancing capitalistic society's mobility needs could have been met 
with another mix of modes of transport. One possible solution could 
have been more trains and buses for longer distances and electric 
vehicles for shorter distances. What consumers give up in such a 
transport system is privacy and flexibility -- things that are highly 
valued by many consumers.


Staffan Hultén is Associate Professor in the Department of Marketing 
and Strategy at the Stockholm School of Economics. His recent 
publications include "Historical School and Institutionalism," 
_Journal of Economic Studies_, 2005; "Predatory Bidding in 
Competitive Tenders: A Swedish Case Study," _European Journal of Law 
and Economics_, 2006 (with Gunnar Alexandersson) and "High and Low 
Bids in Tenders: Strategic Pricing and Other Bidding Behaviour in 
Public Tenders of Passenger Railway Services," _Annals of Public and 
Cooperative Economics_, in press (with Gunnar Alexandersson).

Copyright (c) 2007 by EH.Net. All rights reserved. This work may be 
copied for non-profit educational uses if proper credit is given to 
the author and the list. For other permission, please contact the 
EH.Net Administrator (administrator at eh.net; Telephone: 513-529-2229). 
Published by EH.Net (March 2007). All EH.Net reviews are archived at 
http://www.eh.net/BookReview.