Yes, Guardian, we know

I do compliment the FT on this headline:

China’s EV sector burns bright …

They had wood fired trucks in Nazi Germany and USSR. Which is great because renewables.

Rumour has it that we used to grind wheat and pump water with windmills. Ships relied on wind power and didn’t burn fuels. They lost out too, all of which leads us to a world now supporting 8 billion people, where as the global population in the mid 50’s was under 3 billion.

“Now try working out why they lost against ICEs…..”
Suggest you alter the past tense in that sentence, Tim. Or adopt the future.
I think I can safely predict we won’t see the end of the hydrocarbon fuelled ICE. Not by a long chalk. Not unless something really radical & different comes along.

I mentioned on another thread that I had watched a couple of You Tube videos about electric cars at the beginning of the twentieth century. They could cruise at about 20mph and had a range of around sixty miles. This was quite reasonable at the time because petrol and steam cars were quite slow and limited too. In those early days electric cars were cleaner, easier to use and more reliable than the competition. Petrol cars eventually improved to the point that steam and electric cars became obsolete.

Pretty well since Tesla was a lad in fact.

Gullible fools for somewhat longer. I suspect these will still be around when teleportation is commonplace.

@BJ

In fact, the “Stanley Steamer” set the World Absolute Speed Record in 1906 – 127.6mph… It was the last time that it was held by a wheeled vehicle, aeroplanes took over after that.

I didn’t think that was quite true, but looking into it, that seems to be the case. Interestingly a lot of the very early land speed records were set by electric “cars”, if that’s the right name for a Jeantaud. Look rather more like a cab with the horses removed. And La Jamais Contente which set the 1899 record looked like an electric-powered rocket ship, hilariously over-the-top aerodynamics for something that didn’t reach 70 mph. And that was the last electric to hold the record.

The Œuf de Pâques in 1902 reached 75 mph, the first steam-powered record-holder. Promptly followed by the first ICE, a Mors that clocked 76 mph. But all of these were slower than the fastest trains. The first car to break that barrier was an ICE in 1903 at 83 mph… arguably. It seems a lot of trains were going between 90 and 100 mph, and even beyond, even by the 1890s. Just unofficially. The first independently measured 100 mph train was the City of Truro in 1904, though the first time 100 mph was officially authenticated as a record was the Flying Scotsman in 1934 – by which time trains were well behind the fastest cars. The first car over 100 mph was another ICE in 1904, two months after the City of Truro’s feat was recorded. The Stanley Rocket’s 126 mph in 1906 was the last time a steam car held the record, the first car over 200 km/h, well over the fastest previous car (over 15 mph got added to the record), and clearly faster than contemporary trains. No car seems to have been clearly faster for over a decade, though with the advent of electronic timing the standard of measurement changed, and some ICEs were clearly about the same level. The first clear jump was a Sunbeam 350HP, fitted with an aircraft engine, that managed almost 134 mph in 1922. But by the end of WWI, aircraft were now a lot faster.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_speed_record
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_speed_record

When I were a lad, the City of Birmingham used electric dust carts. I used to pass their depot on my way to and from school. They would go at quite a fast lick first thing in the morning when they were fully charged, but I could walk faster than them in the evening at the end of their shift. After a dark winters day, it was a common sight to see a diesel truck towing them back as they did not have enough power to drive and have lights on.