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Comment by tomatotomato37 | Hacker News Reader

I always thought it was crazy how all those alternative history folks think that the material & chemical sciences of the time that could barely rev an IC engine made out of the most industrialized material ever over 1000 rpm without knocking or throwing a rod could also handle batteries which today require rare-earth materials and exotic chemistries.

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Yeah even today after several more decades of battery science we can just barely make an electric car economical. We still can't get one down to Camry prices.

Electric cars are really fun to drive from a sports perspective, its just a shame they have such huge carbon footprints. Singapore, who has some of best pollution regulations of any modern state, has rated electric cars as "super polluter" status.

> Singapore, who has some of best pollution regulations of any modern state, has rated electric cars as "super polluter" status.

Because they measure CO2 emission at the electrical generation point.

Not Tesla's fault Singapore plants are almost 100% natural gas.

https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/transport/electric-ca...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Singap...

Though in the future there are plans to run a cable to solar panels in Australia. (Slightly surprisingly - you'd think Malaysia was closer and sunny enough). https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jul/14/just-a-m...

Out of the most popular battery chemistries only NiMH, requires rare-earths - specifically Lanthanum, which is also used as a catalyst in... oil refining.

The assertion that this is "crazy" and "alternative history" because it makes claims it never made is not even wrong.

Lead batteries don't.

The biggest andvantage for lead batteries is probably that you don't need cell balancing which would have been really hard at that time. You just overcharge all cells and call it a day. Really nice batteries from a robustness perspective.

To a 1910 industrialist acid batteries were exotic chemistry. Don't forget IC cars were hand-cranked during this time, and magnetos for spark plugs only came into commercial availablity 4 years before this article is based. It took another decade for starter motors and auxiliary electronics to make their way into IC automobiles.

Basic commericially avaliable electronics were cutting-edge back then.

The gasoline engine was probably equally exotic.

Sulfuric acid has been manufactured since to 18th century. And you don't need permanent magnets to make a DC motor. And electrical motors were even used to power vehicles before Otto constructed his gasoline engine.

I guess heat engines just were something people were more used to? Going from steam to gasoline seems like a smaller step.

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