this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2024
73 points (92.0% liked)
Asklemmy
43984 readers
936 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- [email protected]: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Opting for gasoline over electricity early on when cars started to become a thing, we were already going electric, but a smear campaign put fear into people's minds about electric and switched tk gasoline.
We always have to pander to the capitalists profits, how could the make money with clean electricity???
Batteries could have been standard for a bit longer, but it seems to me that eventually the need to go faster for longer would have forced combustion engines to be a thing. All they had were lead-acid batteries (or primary cells, but that would be dumb) and new more energy-dense chemistries didn't show up for a long time after. Maybe they could have found one if they really needed, but it's a tricky science even today, so I'm skeptical.
It's possible, I suppose, that infrastructure could have been rolled out for both en mass, but I don't see an even mix lasting through the whole 20th century. Probably not even past WWII.
That's because of car companies pushing the mentality that everyone needs to drive everywhere... for freedom and shit.
We could have been more like europe is today and have a robust railsystem. Shit, we could have had the best rail system in the world.
Or, y'know, there's a war on and you can't stop to recharge, or you need to cross a desert, or you just want to do an express route with one vehicle...
Combustion is just a superior vehicle technology vs. lead-acid electric, assuming you don't worry about emissions, and that will show up in plenty of contexts. Eventually, lead-acid would go the way of the other workable-but-not-as-nice technologies like crystal radios or black-and-white film.
So... there isnt a war in the US right now, and there probablywont be one.
"Lead-acid electric..." when was the last time you looked at an electric car. Electric cars can now give you 400+ miles of range just like ICE vehicles, and I don't have to scavenge fuel from who knows where, all I need is a few solar panels and I'm good... eventually.
Also, IF this was a war zone, I'd rather be whisper quiet than to tell everyone around that I'm driving by with the sound of an engine. Oh and it's easier to remain undetected by food than on a vehicle anyway.
Yeah, I know, I'm not arguing against electric now, or even as a concept then. This was an alt-history exercise, remember?