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Miami Herald
2 days ago
- Automotive
- Miami Herald
How U.S. Battery Innovations Could Transform EVs, Homes and the Power Grid
Your smartphone, electric car and home solar array all share a hidden truth: the humble lithium‑ion battery powering them was first commercialized in 1991. Today, three decades later, the U.S. still relies heavily on this vintage chemistry. But a quiet energy revolution is underway that will drive longer EV road trips from Los Angeles to San Francisco, slash home storage costs, and cut reliance on contentious cobalt and nickel supply chains. Nearly every device you own, from your iPhone in Manhattan to your Tesla parked in Palo Alto, uses lithium‑ion cells. This workhorse chemistry delivers high energy density in a compact package, but its road map has begun to bump against real‑world limits: Range ceilings: Most American EVs top out around 300–350 miles per charge, still shy of that California coast‑to‑coast dream. Safety headaches: Flammable liquid electrolytes have prompted high‑profile recalls by major automakers after thermal‑runaway concerns: Over 60% of the world's cobalt and 70% of nickel come from geopolitically sensitive regions that can involve labor and environmental issues. Think of first‑generation lithium‑ion like the Ford Model T: revolutionary in its day, but ready for a homegrown reinvention. Under the bipartisan Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the Department of Energy aims to drive battery pack costs below $80 per kWh by 2025. Meanwhile, the DOE's Battery500 Consortium brings together Argonne National Lab, Ford, GM and Solid Power to push solid‑state energy density past 500 Wh/kg. States like California (with its Self‑Generation Incentive Program) and New York (via NY Green Bank) are offering rebates on stationary storage, while utilities such as PG&E and NextEra Energy are piloting grid‑scale sodium‑ion and flow batteries. These incentives, paired with swelling U.S. venture investment-over $5 billion in 2023 for battery startups-are rewiring America's cleantech landscape. Below are the five battery families poised to reshape U.S. energy, from EV showrooms in Detroit to solar farms in Texas. 1. Solid‑State Batteries: The 500-Mile EV Game Changer How they work: Replace liquid electrolytes with a solid ceramic or polymer-think of it as an unbreakable ionic highway. Why it matters for Americans: 500‑mile EV range: Ford and BMW collaborations with Solid Power aim to hit this milestone by 2027, letting a single charge carry you from Denver to No more Tesla battery‑fire headlines-solid electrolytes don't fuel thermal DOE tests show over 1,200 full cycles with minimal capacity loss-translating to 10+ years in daily service. Challenges: Scaling to gigafactory volumes remains a multibillion‑dollar hurdle. Expect U.S. pilot production lines by 2025 and limited consumer SUVs by 2030. 2. Lithium‑Sulfur: Lightweight, Low-Cost, and Made in America How they work: Swap pricey metal oxide cathodes for abundant sulfur, slashing pack weight and cost. American edge: Sulfur is a byproduct of U.S. oil refining, costing under $0.05 per kg. Key perks: Up to 500 Wh/kg theoretical energy density-fueling lighter drones for NOAA weather projects and next‑gen eVTOL cost: Potential factory costs as low as $60/kWh. Hurdle: Polysulfide shuttling degrades cycle life-startups like Lyten (HQ: Menlo Park) and Sion Power (Chandler, AZ) are deploying graphene coatings to stabilize cathodes, targeting pilot production by 2027. 3. Sodium‑Ion Batteries: Cheap, Abundant, and Perfect for Home Storage How they work: Replace lithium with sodium in the same "rocking‑chair" format-no exotic supply chains required. U.S. relevance: Sodium is over 10,000 times more abundant than lithium, with vast deposits in Gulf Coast salt flats and across the western U.S. Pros: Cost: Sodium-ion packs could drop below $70/kWh by 2026, undercutting even lithium-ion on reliability: Performs well down to –4 °F, making it a strong candidate for northern grid storage and winter life: Lab data and projections suggest 3,000–5,000 cycles, rivalling or exceeding lithium-ion durability. Use cases: Ideal for stationary home and community storage, as well as micro-mobility like e‑bikes and scooters. Catching up fast: While current sodium-ion energy density remains lower (110–140 Wh/kg), CATL projects next-gen cells reaching 200 Wh/kg by 2027, putting them on par with lithium-ion. Lab results also suggest cycle life of 3,000–5,000 cycles, making sodium-ion viable not just for home storage and scooters, but potentially for urban EVs and commercial fleets. 4. Aluminum‑Ion: Ultra-Fast Charging for Phones and Tools How they work: Anodic aluminum sheets cycle ions through novel cathode structures and ionic liquids. American R&D: Oak Ridge National Lab and Argonne prototypes show full charges in under 10 minutes. Benefits: Fast charging: Down from hours to minutes for smartphones and power Aluminum is the most recycled metal in the U.S.-no toxic extraction. Roadblocks: Lab cells still struggle to maintain 500+ cycles. Commercial rollout likely 2030+, pending DOE's SCALE‑UP funding rounds. 5. Zinc‑Air: Reliable Backup Power for Hurricanes and Grid Outages How they work: Zinc oxidizes at the anode while ambient oxygen reacts at the cathode-like a fuel cell that never runs out of air. Why Texas and Florida care: $50/kWh system costs are within reach for community backup during hurricane-driven blackouts.10‑day storage capability keeps critical services online when solar or wind dips. Limitation: Slow recharge time-best suited for primary backup or flow‑style refueling at centralized hubs. Powerwall vs. sodium‑ion: A Tesla Powerwall 2 lists around $11,500 ($430/kWh installed) today. Early sodium‑ion systems from GridScale Energy (Austin) are targeting $300/kWh installed by 2026-over 30% costs: The average price of a new EV in the U.S. hovers around $55,000. If solid‑state reduces battery pack costs by 15%, automakers could drop sticker prices by $8,000 or boost range by 100 miles without raising pilot: Florida Power & Light's zinc‑air trial aims for 1 MW, 10 MWh systems to handle hurricane season peak loads, at an estimated $200/kWh installed-half the cost of lithium‑ion backups. Why Battery Tech Is Key to America's Energy Security and Affordability Your wallet: U.S. DOE targets and IRA credits could cut your home battery costs in half by 2030. One of the leading reasons for NOT buying an EV in the US is concern over car price which is largely determined by battery security: Fewer imports of cobalt and nickel mean stronger supply chains and less price commute: Imagine your EV reliably hitting 600 miles on a charge-no more range anxiety on I‑95 or Route 66. No single battery chemistry will rule. Instead, expect a U.S. portfolio approach: Luxury EVs: Solid‑state batteries for flagship models from Tesla, Ford and mobility: Sodium‑ion for entry‑level EVs, e‑bikes and scooters in urban cores like New York or Los electronics: Aluminum‑ion and improved lithium‑ion for phones, laptops and power tools that recharge in resilience: Zinc‑air and next‑gen flow batteries giving states their own backup independence. American automakers, utilities and labs are investing tens of billion annually to lead this charge. The real competition isn't just technical-it's about reshoring manufacturing, training a new workforce, and securing U.S. leadership in the energy transition. Q: When can I buy these locally? Sodium‑ion home/storage: Available via regional installers by 2025– EVs: Limited pilot fleets from 2027–2030; mass‑market rollout by packs: Aerospace and specialty drone use in early 2030s. Q: Will lithium‑ion stick around? Absolutely. Existing plants in Nevada and Ohio will keep cranking out improved lithium‑ion for phones, laptops and lower‑range EVs through the 2030s, with incremental gains in lifetime and safety. Q: How about recycling? U.S. firms like Li‑Cycle (Toronto HQ, U.S. plants in Rochester and Gilbert) and Redwood Materials (Nevada) are scaling up facilities to recover over 95% of metals from spent cells, while new chemistries with fewer toxic metals streamline processing. Better batteries are not science fiction; they're being engineered today in American labs, factories and testbeds. Over the next decade, advances in solid‑state, sodium‑ion, lithium‑sulfur, aluminum‑ion and zinc‑air will reshape how we power cars, phones and the grid. The question for U.S. consumers isn't if these breakthroughs will arrive, but which one will change your life. And it might just be Made in America. Copyright 2025 The Arena Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Hindustan Times
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Hindustan Times
Trapped between two wars: The art of the Lost Generation
Sometime in the early 1920s, Gertrude Stein took her ancient Ford Model T from her home in Paris's Rue de Fleurus to a local mechanic. The car had been having starting trouble, and the young mechanic assigned to it was making heavy weather of it. Eventually, Stein deemed his efforts unsatisfactory and complained to his boss, who berated the boy, saying: 'You are all a generation perdue.' When Ernest Hemingway, a friend, next visited her home, she applied it to him and others of his generation. 'All of you young people who served in the war. You are a lost generation,' she said. Hemingway, who understood the value of phrases like that, used it as an epigraph for his first novel, The Sun Also Rises (1926), which follows the lives of a group of American and British expatriates in Paris in the mid-1920s, rootless people wounded physically and emotionally by the Great War, looking for, and not always finding, an anchor. The expatriates in Paris at the time, incidentally, made up a sort of who's who of the cultural icons of the first half of the 20th century. The poet Ezra Pound moved to Paris in 1921. Writer Ford Madox Ford in 1922. Novelist John Dos Passos in 1919. James Joyce came to Paris intending a two-day layover en route to London, and ended up staying until France fell to the Germans in World War 2. Sylvia Beach, the daughter of American missionaries, moved to Paris in 1917, and set up Shakespeare and Company, one of the world's most famous bookshops. F Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda Fitzgerald visited in 1921 and '24. (A year after that second visit, he would release his best-known work, set in this era, but in New York: The Great Gatsby. It is 100 years old this year.) Back to Paris, in the wake of the Great War, this was a city where people caught fish in the Seine for dinner, and toilets with aluminium containers were still emptied into cesspools that were cleared by horse-drawn wagons. But it was also the home of Picasso, Modigliani, Chagall and, on occasion, Salvador Dali. It was the city of Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, of Coco Chanel and the singer Josephine Baker. It was a world of people who had been in the war young, were trying to build their own anchors — through art and sculpture and dance, stories and fashion and architecture — and didn't yet know another war was coming. *** The rootlessness was not restricted to Paris. In England, in 1922, TE Lawrence, better known as Lawrence of Arabia, dissatisfied with life as a civil servant, applied to the Royal Air Force under the name TE Ross and was initially rejected, before people like Winston Churchill recommended he be accepted. The poet Robert Graves suffered so badly from shell shock that even the smell of flowers reminded him of the gas warfare attacks he had suffered as a soldier. Siegfried Sassoon, awarded the Military Cross, one of the war's highest decorations, became a poet and a conscientious objector. Wilfred Owen, generally considered one of the great poets of the war, was killed a week before its end, aged 25. What passing-bells for these who die as cattle? / Only the monstrous anger of the guns. / Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle / Can patter out their hasty orisons. / No mockeries for them; no prayers nor bells, / Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, — / The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells; / And bugles calling for them from sad shires… he wrote, in Anthem for Doomed Youth (1917). *** This was also the beginning of a new world for the Western woman. First, with the men off in the battlefields, they took up jobs in factories. Many lost their menfolk and breadwinners; the lucky among them received war-widow pensions, but others struggled. More women were forced to seek permanent employment. This, directly and indirectly, contributed to the movement for women's suffrage, and the right to vote was finally extended to them. Back to Stein's phrase, 'Lost Generation' soon began to be used beyond its original context of her inner circle of artists, poets and writers who flocked to Paris in the 1920s. It became the tag for anyone born between 1883 and 1900. Franz Kafka (1883-1924) would fit the bill, even though he never fought in the war, having been found medically unfit. The Trial (1925) and The Castle (1926), his best-known novels, deal with the sense of despair, alienation and fruitless search for meaning that would come to define the young adults of this age. But what about Hugh Lofting of Doctor Dolittle fame, or PG Wodehouse? Well, there never has been just one kind of art. This is a period that saw the rise, for instance, of the crime novel, with people essentially binge-reading the work of great British pulp-fiction writers such as Sax Rohmer (a former soldier and creator of the Chinese criminal mastermind Fu Manchu); Hermann McNeile aka Sapper of the Bulldog Drummond adventures (who was still serving when he began to write these tales, and would inspire authors such as Ian Fleming and Alistair MacLean); Dornford Yates, who alternated been funny stories of upper-class Englishmen dealing with declining fortunes, and hard-edged spy thrillers, with characters that moved between genres. It wasn't just the men. Three of the four Queens of Crime who dominated the Golden Age of Mystery: Agatha Christie and Dorothy L Sayers in England, and Ngaio Marsh in New Zealand, were from this cohort. (The fourth, Margery Allingham, was born in 1904.) Christie served as a nurse with the Red Cross during World War 1, which left her with a vast knowledge of poisons (and a penchant for murderous nurses). Sayers, credited with popularising the statement 'It pays to advertise', also wrote the original advertising jingle for Guinness. Marsh toured as a stage actress during the war and would use her knowledge of stagecraft to great effect in her Roderick Alleyn books. *** Across the Atlantic, other Lost Generation authors were redefining the crime novel. Dashiell Hammett, an ambulance driver in the war, would define the 'hard-boiled' detective novel; a genre launched by Carroll John Daly's Three Gun Terry (1923). Raymond Chandler (1888-1959) would take up Hammett's mantle with gritty, hard edged crime thrillers such as The Big Sleep and Farewell, My Lovely. The Lost Generation changed children's literature as well. The Australian-British Pamela Lyndon Travers created Mary Poppins in 1934. Antoine de Saint-Exupery's The Little Prince (1943) remains one of the bestselling books of all time. The Englishwoman Richmal Crompton created that irrepressible schoolboy William Brown in 1922. Air Force pilot WE Johns (also the man who rejected Lawrence's application to the RAF) created Biggles. And there was, of course, Enid Blyton (1897-1968). *** World War 1 made Hollywood what it is today. The destruction of European cinema in the war saw a wave of actors and directors make their way to America. There were so many movies being made in the US after the war — 80% of all movies made worldwide — that the studio system evolved, as did the producers who would dominate the industry's golden age: Louis B Mayer, Irving Thalberg, Harry Cohn, Jack L Warner. All the great silent comedians belonged to this generation: Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, and Chico, Harpo and Groucho Marx. So did many of the great directors who would transform cinema: Ernst Lubitsch, Fritz Lang, George Cukor, Howard Hawks, Alfred Hitchcock, Jean Renoir, Rene Clair. And, of course, there were the actors. The South African-born Basil Rathbone crawled to the German side, across no-man's land, disguised as, of all things, a tree, to recover military intelligence that would earn him the Military Cross. He would go on to epitomise sneering British villainy in swashbuckling films, and is still considered one of the best portrayers of Sherlock Holmes. Claude Rains, who made every movie better just by being in it, and whose performance in Casablanca is still remembered, lost almost all the vision in one eye as a result of a gas attack. Within months of the war breaking out, Ronald Colman (A Tale of Two Cities, Prisoner of Zenda) had his leg shattered by a mortar shell, forcing him to crawl back to safety. The experience left him with an air of melancholic reserve that worked well for the characters created by another Lost Generation Englishman: James Hilton. His novels Lost Horizon (1933) and Random Harvest (1941) both featured world-weary protagonists scarred by the war. Colman played both men in the film adaptations. 'It was the war that made an actor out of me,' he would later say. 'I wasn't my own man anymore. We went out. Strangers came back.' (K Narayanan writes on films, videogames, books and occasionally technology)
Sydney Morning Herald
6 days ago
- Automotive
- Sydney Morning Herald
Electric cars died a century ago. Could that happen again?
More than a century before Tesla rolled out its first cars, the Baker Electric Coupe and the Riker Electric Roadster rumbled down American streets. Battery-powered cars were so popular that, for a time, about a third of New York's taxis were electric. But those early electric vehicles began to lose ground to a new class of cars, like the Ford Model T, that were cheaper and could more easily be refuelled by new oil-based fuels that were becoming available around the country. Bolstered by federal tax incentives in the 1920s, the oil industry boomed — and so did petrol-powered cars. That history has largely been forgotten, and almost all of the early electric cars have disappeared so completely that most people alive today have never seen one — and many have no idea that they even existed. A few specimens are in museums and private collections, including a fully restored Baker Electric that show host Jay Leno keeps in his sprawling California garage. Leno's ancient electric car has a wooden frame and 36-inch rubber wheels. It looks like a stagecoach, but it is propelled by electric motors and batteries just like a current-day Tesla Model Y or Cadillac Lyriq. It elicited smiles and amazement from people on the streets of Burbank, California, when Leno drove it around town recently. The car may be a novelty, but it is newly relevant because the United States may be poised to repeat history. The Trump administration and Republicans in Congress are working to undercut the growth of electric vehicles, impose a new tax on them and swing federal policy sharply in favour of oil and petrol. A hundred years ago, politicians put their thumbs on the scale — and came down on the side of oil. Scholars who have studied the earlier age of electric vehicles see parallels in their demise in the early decades of the 1900s and the attacks they are facing now. In both eras, electric cars struggled to gain acceptance in the marketplace and were undermined by politics. A big knock against them was they had to be charged and ultimately were considered less convenient than vehicles with internal combustion engines. 'Electric cars are good if you have a towing company,' President Donald Trump said at a campaign rally in Iowa in October 2023. At another appearance the next month, he said, 'You can't get out of New Hampshire in an electric car.'
The Age
6 days ago
- Automotive
- The Age
Electric cars died a century ago. Could that happen again?
More than a century before Tesla rolled out its first cars, the Baker Electric Coupe and the Riker Electric Roadster rumbled down American streets. Battery-powered cars were so popular that, for a time, about a third of New York's taxis were electric. But those early electric vehicles began to lose ground to a new class of cars, like the Ford Model T, that were cheaper and could more easily be refuelled by new oil-based fuels that were becoming available around the country. Bolstered by federal tax incentives in the 1920s, the oil industry boomed — and so did petrol-powered cars. That history has largely been forgotten, and almost all of the early electric cars have disappeared so completely that most people alive today have never seen one — and many have no idea that they even existed. A few specimens are in museums and private collections, including a fully restored Baker Electric that show host Jay Leno keeps in his sprawling California garage. Leno's ancient electric car has a wooden frame and 36-inch rubber wheels. It looks like a stagecoach, but it is propelled by electric motors and batteries just like a current-day Tesla Model Y or Cadillac Lyriq. It elicited smiles and amazement from people on the streets of Burbank, California, when Leno drove it around town recently. The car may be a novelty, but it is newly relevant because the United States may be poised to repeat history. The Trump administration and Republicans in Congress are working to undercut the growth of electric vehicles, impose a new tax on them and swing federal policy sharply in favour of oil and petrol. A hundred years ago, politicians put their thumbs on the scale — and came down on the side of oil. Scholars who have studied the earlier age of electric vehicles see parallels in their demise in the early decades of the 1900s and the attacks they are facing now. In both eras, electric cars struggled to gain acceptance in the marketplace and were undermined by politics. A big knock against them was they had to be charged and ultimately were considered less convenient than vehicles with internal combustion engines. 'Electric cars are good if you have a towing company,' President Donald Trump said at a campaign rally in Iowa in October 2023. At another appearance the next month, he said, 'You can't get out of New Hampshire in an electric car.'
Observer
6 days ago
- Automotive
- Observer
Electric Vehicles died a century ago. Could that happen again?
BURBANK, Calif. — More than a century before Tesla rolled out its first cars, the Baker Electric Coupe and the Riker Electric Roadster rumbled down American streets. Battery-powered cars were so popular that, for a time, about a third of New York's taxis were electric. But those early electric vehicles began to lose ground to a new class of cars, like the Ford Model T, that were cheaper and could more easily be refueled by new oil-based fuels that were becoming available around the country. Bolstered by federal tax incentives in the 1920s, the oil industry boomed — and so did gasoline-powered cars. That history has largely been forgotten, and almost all of the early electric cars have disappeared so completely that most people alive today have never seen one, and many have no idea that they even existed. A few specimens are in museums and private collections, including a fully restored Baker Electric that Jay Leno keeps in his sprawling California garage. Leno's ancient electric car has a wooden frame and 36-inch rubber wheels. It looks like a stagecoach, but it is propelled by electric motors and batteries just like a current-day Tesla Model Y or Cadillac Lyriq. It elicited smiles and amazement from people on the streets of Burbank, California, when Leno drove it around town recently. The car may be a novelty, but it is newly relevant because the United States may be poised to repeat history. The Trump administration and Republicans in Congress are working to undercut the growth of electric vehicles, impose a new tax on them, and swing federal policy sharply in favor of oil and gasoline. Scholars who have studied the earlier age of electric vehicles see parallels in their demise in the early decades of the 1900s and the attacks they are facing now. In both eras, electric cars struggled to gain acceptance in the marketplace and were undermined by politics. A big knock against them was that they had to be charged and ultimately were considered less convenient than vehicles with internal combustion engines. 'Electric cars are good if you have a towing company,' President Donald Trump said at a campaign rally in Iowa in October 2023. At another appearance the next month, he said, 'You can't get out of New Hampshire in an electric car.' Charging and access to fuel were also concerns a century earlier. Americans in the 1920s wanted to explore the country. But many rural and suburban areas didn't have electricity. President Franklin D. Roosevelt made a big push to electrify the entire country in 1936 — the last farms were connected to the grid in the early 1970s. That made it difficult to use electric cars in many places. Republican leaders say that electric vehicles do not deserve subsidies in the tax code and that their tax bill levels the playing field that Democrats had tilted in favor of one technology. A hundred years ago, lawmakers also put their thumbs on the scale — and came down on the side of oil. The oil industry has enjoyed numerous tax breaks. One was enacted in 1926 when Congress allowed oil companies to deduct their taxable income by 27.5% of their sales. The sponsor of the legislation later admitted that the incentive was excessive. 'We grabbed 27.5% because we were not only hogs but the odd figure made it appear as though it was scientifically arrived at,' Sen. Tom Connally, D-Texas, who sponsored the break, was quoted as saying in a biography of Lyndon B. Johnson, 'Sam Johnson's Boy: A Close-Up of the President From Texas.' That tax break lasted for decades. It was eliminated for large oil producers and reduced for smaller companies in 1975. Perhaps unsurprisingly, crude oil became dominant. The Energy Department noted on a timeline on its website that electric cars 'all but disappeared by 1935.' The triumph of internal combustion made long-distance travel accessible to the masses and helped power the U.S. economy. It also led to deadly urban air pollution and has been a major cause of climate change. Now, the decades-long tug of war between combustion engine and electric cars is intensifying again, and electric cars may be in trouble, at least in the United States. Sales of electric cars are growing quickly in most of the rest of world, increasing 35% in China in the first four months of the year and 25% in Europe, according to Rho Motion, a research firm. But in the United States, sales were up a more modest 11% in the first three months of 2025, according to Kelley Blue Book. Republican leaders are pushing legislation that would eliminate many Biden administration programs intended to promote electric vehicle sales, including a $7,500 federal tax credit. They also want to impose a new annual $250 fee on electric vehicle owners to finance highway construction and maintenance. While the Republican changes probably wouldn't kill electric vehicles, they could set the industry back years. 'E.V. momentum in the U.S. has slowed, with policy uncertainty mounting,' analysts at Bernstein said in a note this month. But electric cars have not just been hampered by politics. They also had to overcome gender stereotypes. Their benefits, like quiet, smooth operation,n were considered by some men to be too feminine, and, in the late 1800s and early 1900s, many models like the Baker Electric were explicitly marketed only to women. Advertisements for the early electrics hang on the walls of Leno's Burbank garage. 'Make This the Happiest Christmas — Give Your Wife an Electric,' proclaims one. On another, a young woman pleads, 'Daddy, Get Me a Baker.' Men, by contrast, have long been pitched on the masculine virtues of gasoline vehicles that roar and thunder. In the fall of 2022, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga..., who is closely allied with Trump, pushed the notion that gasoline cars are more macho at a rally. 'There's nothing more American than the roar of a V-8 engine under the hood of a Ford Mustang or Chevy Camaro, an incredible feel of all that horsepower.' But Democrats, she said, 'want to emasculate the way we drive.' Elon Musk, Tesla's CEO who has been working with the Trump administration, has tried to broaden the appeal of electric vehicles. His company's newest model is the Cybertruck, a massive pickup truck with lots of sharp angles. 'Musk has done everything he could to try to make a Tesla a manly vehicle,' said Virginia Scharff, an emeritus distinguished professor of history at the University of New Mexico and author of numerous books, including 'Taking the Wheel: Women and the Coming of the Motor Age.' But, Scharff added, Musk may have gone too far. His alignment with Trump's conservative politics has alienated some of the most reliable buyers of electric cars — liberals and environmentalists who hope to move the world away from fossil fuels. 'Here's like the gender flip: Tesla is so associated with a kind of toxic masculinity now as opposed to the electric car being associated with femininity in the early part of the 20th century,' Scharff said. Leno, the former 'Tonight Show' host, who now has an online show focused on cars, 'Jay Leno's Garage,' has a restored 1909 Baker Electric in his collection. It has a top speed of 25 mph and can travel 80 miles on a full charge. With a high-top cab decorated in Victorian flair, it has two fabric-cushioned bench seats facing each other and roller shades on the windows. The car was meant to accommodate fanciful women's hats, which at the turn of the century were often big and bold. As an added touch, the car's designers mounted a makeup case inside the car. 'What do men like?' Leno said. 'Something that rolls, explodes, and makes noise. That's why men like the gasoline car, because it frightened children, you know, that type of thing.' Leno said he loves the Baker, which he drives around Burbank at least once a year, to see holiday lights and decorations with his wife. He said such vehicles had many merits, convenience among them. They are low maintenance, they're fast, and you can fuel them at home, particularly at night when electricity is generally much more affordable than during the day. The concept of home charging isn't new. Home car chargers also made their debut a century ago, only bulkier and a bit more frightful. 'It looked like a machine out of Dr. Frankenstein's laboratory,' said Leslie Kendall, chief historian at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles. Kendall said electric cars could have stuck around and even done well. But they were hampered by the lack of electricity in many communities, long charging times and their higher costs relative to gasoline vehicles — a Model T in 1908 cost about $650 compared with $1,750 for an electric roadster. 'You could carry extra gas with you,' he said. 'You couldn't carry extra electricity.' Richard Riker, a grandson of electric car pioneer Andrew L. Riker, said his grandfather had identified one of the biggest stumbling blocks to the cars he designed and sold — one that lingers to this day. 'They didn't have charging stations out on the street corners like my grandfather said they needed to,' Riker said. During the Biden administration, Congress sought to address that shortcoming by allocating $7.5 billion for the construction of public chargers. Trump has halted that program. One of Andrew Riker's cars from the mid-1890s, a topless, two-seater cab that still sputters along at about 15 mph, is on display at the Petersen Museum along with other electric vehicles, both from history and those under development. Despite policy and other challenges, Riker said he was still optimistic about electric vehicles. He expects that in the coming decades, technical advances will give such vehicles a big edge over gasoline vehicles. 'If you can charge a car in five minutes and go 500 miles,' he said, 'the gasoline engine is history.' This article originally appeared in
