7 3/8 x 9 1/4 T echnical / Build Your Own Electric Vehicle / Leitman / 373-2 / Chapter 3
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Build Your Own Elec tric Vehicle
Internal Combustion Vehicle Growth Fueled by Cheap and Plentiful Oil
The lessons of World War I were simple. Flexible, oil-powered internal combustion engine cars, trucks, tanks, and airplanes were superior to fixed, coal-powered railway transportation; and those who controlled the supply of oil won the war. The allies had Standard Oil, Royal Dutch/Shell, and Anglo-Persian Oil. The Germans did not have access to vast amounts of oil; the destruction of the Ploesti refinery in Romania and their belated, failed attempts at capturing Baku cost them the war. Meanwhile, internal combustion engine vehicle registrations in the United States exploded from one-half million in 1910, to 9 million in 1920, to 27 million in 1930, and slowed by the depression, to 33 million in 1940. Gasoline that was sold by the local blacksmith in containers in the early 1900s gave way to 10,000 wooden “filling stations” with gravity-feed tanks at the beginning of the 1920s, to more than 150,000 buried tank/ electric-pump-driven “service stations” in the 1930s. More and more paved roads were built; the landscape was changed forever. More oil continued to be found in the 1920s in places like California (Signal Hill), Oklahoma (greater Seminole and Oklahoma City), West Texas (Yates Field), Venezuela (Maracaibo Basin), and Iraq (Kirkuk). Then the biggest oil find of them all was discovered in October 1930—the giant East Texas oil reservoir that later proved to measure 45 miles long and up to 10 miles wide. Crude oil that sold for around $2 a barrel in the mid-1920s dropped to less than 10 cents a barrel in the early 1930s (the low was 4 cents a barrel in May 1933), and gasoline prices that had been chugging along between 10 and 20 cents per gallon from 1910 through the 1920s dropped accordingly. Now the problem was too much oil, and the United States government had to enter the picture to control prices.
1940 to 1989 This period included the “golden age” of the internal combustion engine vehicle and ended up with legislative efforts in states and the federal government regarding oil shocks and a renewed interest in electric cars. With cheap, available gasoline prevailing as fuel, and basic internal combustion engine vehicle design fixed, manufacturing economies of scale brought the price within reach of every consumer. Expansion away from urban areas made vehicle ownership a necessity. The creation of an enormous highway infrastructure culminated in completion of the interstate highway system. This was accompanied by the destruction of urban non-internal-combustion-powered transit infrastructure by political maneuvering in the United States, and by damage during World War II in Japan and Europe.
World War II Oil Lessons Are Learned by All
Oil was the one resource Japan did not have at all. In retrospect, Japan’s war was easy to understand. It needed the oil resources of Indonesia, Malaysia, and Indochina. After an oil embargo against Japan was set up in mid-1941 by blocking the use of Japanese funds held in the United States, Japan was desperate for oil, and did what it had to do to get it. The Pearl Harbor attack was an effort to protect its Eastern flank, but poor timing made it an infamous event (Japan’s “declaration of war” didn’t get delivered until after the attack). Japan’s early loss of planes and ships at Midway meant it was never able to provide adequate protection for its oil tanker convoys from Indonesia. Dwindling oil reserves and a nonfunctioning synthetic fuels program meant new pilots couldn’t be trained and ship fleets couldn’t maneuver. While Japan “lost” World War II long before 1945, it learned its oil lesson well and converted to the oil standard soon after the war.
