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Since the Californian ZEV mandate caused a new wave of interest in the electric automotive propulsion system to sweep over the world, the question of why earlier attempts to bring the electric vehicle to the market failed is heavily debated. As to the possible causes of failure of the electric vehicle during the first two decades of this century, the consensus among automotive engineers tends to be that it was the high weight and the low energy density of the battery which prevented the electric motor from becoming the dominant automotive propulsion system. Since then, this argument goes, the situation hasn't changed very much. In this paper, based upon a recently finished doctoral dissertation on the history of early American and European electric vehicles [1], other, mainly non-technical, failure factors are suggested as being more convincing.

The idea of "understanding the present through its history" is based on two insights. First, it helps to know where a technology comes from: what were its predecessors, how did they evolve as a result of the continuous efforts to solve theoretical and practical problems, who were crucial in their emergence, and which cultural differences made them develop into divergent families of artifacts? Second, and closely related to the first insight, how does a certain technology or system fit into its societal context, its culture of mobility, its engineering culture, its culture of car driving, its alternatives, its opponents? Only thus, by studying its prehistory and its socio-cultural context, can we acquire a true ‘grasp’ of a technology.