1940 to 1989

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.

On the other hand I.G. Farben, the huge German chemical combine, had mastered synthetic fuel recovery from coal by the early 1920s—hydrogenation was the most popular method—and Germany had plenty of coal. But most of Germany’s oil imports came from the West, and increasing demand was causing a foreign exchange hemorrhage. Hitler believed if Russian Baku oil reserves could be added to those of its ally Romania, along with Germany’s own 1940 synthetic fuel reserves, the “ThousandYear Reich” was a cinch via a blitzkrieg-tactics war that didn’t consume much fuel. Unfortunately for Hitler, his blitzkrieg advances frequently outran their fuel supply trucks, he never got to Baku, his Romanian oil supply at Ploesti was destroyed early in the war, and the German advance in North Africa ended when its oil tankers couldn’t make it across the Mediterranean. In addition, German synthetic fuel aviation gasoline was never quite as “hot” as that produced from real crude oil, and the entire German war machine came to a halt when systematic bombings of its synthetic fuel plants later in the war reduced them to rubble. Germany also lost World War II long before 1945, but learned its oil lesson well and converted to the oil standard soon after the war despite massive reserves of coal.

What did the allies learn from World War II? They relearned the lesson from World War I: Whoever controls the supply of oil wins the war.

They also learned the value of a strategic petroleum reserve. Up until 1943, the allies nearly lost the war to the Germans in the North Atlantic—the success of submarine wolf packs made it nearly impossible for allied oil tankers to resupply England, Europe, and Africa. Even in 1945, countless lives were wasted and the Russians moved toward Berlin while Patton’s tanks sat without fuel in France, giving the Germans time to regroup and resupply.

While the United States provided six out of every seven barrels of allied oil during World War II, it was recognized by many in government that it would soon become a net importer of oil. More oil had been discovered in Bahrain in 1932, and in Kuwait (Burgan field) and Saudi Arabia (Damman field) in 1938. In 1943, as all eyes turned toward the Middle East with its reserves variously estimated at around 600 billion barrels, the United States government proposed the “solidification” plan to assist the oil companies (that is, share the financial risk) in Saudi Arabian oil development. While this plan and subsequent revisions to it were rejected with much indignation by the oil companies, decades later with 20/20 hindsight, they would all gladly change their votes. A World Awash in Oil After World War II

After World War II, pent-up consumer demand released another type of blitzkrieg, the internal combustion engine automobile. While Figure 3-6 shows United States automobile registrations were almost quadrupling, the rest of the world’s auto population grew more than twentyfold: from 13 million in 1950 to nearly 300 million in 1990. Oil exploration in this period was in high gear. A nearly inexhaustible supply had apparently been found in the Middle East; gasoline prices bounced between 20 and 30 cents per gallon until the early 1970s. Aided by the convenience of the internal combustion automobile, America moved to the suburbs, where distances were measured in commuting minutes, not miles. Fuel-efficient automobiles were the last item on anyone’s mind during this period. Gasoline was plentiful and cheap (reflecting underlying oil prices) and regular local retail price wars made it even cheaper.

“Environment” was an infrequently used word with an unclear meaning. Highway construction proceeded at an unprecedented pace, culminating with the Interstate

Figure 3-6 Growth in automobile registrations from 1950 to 1990.

Highway Bill signed by President Eisenhower in 1956, authorizing a 42,500-mile superhighway system. Public transportation and the railroads—the big losers in Japan and Europe due to World War II damage—also became the big losers in the United States as the U.S. government formally finished the job that major industrial corporations, acting in conspiratorial secrecy and convicted of violating the Sherman Antitrust Act, had started in the 1930s and 1940s: ripping up the tracks, dismantling the infrastructure, and scrapping intercity and intracity light rail and trolley systems that could have saved consumers, cities, and the environment the expenditure of billions of dollars today. (Source: Jonathan Kwitny, “The Great Transportation Conspiracy,” Harper’s, February 1981.)

The post–World War II rebuilding of European and Japanese infrastructures made them more modern than the United States. Germany and Japan (and most of the rest of the industrialized world) rapidly converted from coal to oil economies after World War II, and underwent an unprecedented period of economic and industrial expansion as the surge in automobile registrations outside of the United States, shown in Figure 3-6, attests. All the industrialized economies of the world were now dependent on internal combustion engine vehicles and oil.

The 1960s: The Sleeper Awakens

While electric vehicle automobile development languished since the 1920s (except for Detroit Electric’s efforts), commercial and industrial EV activities continued to flourish, perhaps best exemplified by Great Britain’s electric milk trucks (called “floats”) and its total electric vehicle population of more than 100,000.

The heightened environmental concerns of the 1960s, specifically air pollution, were the first wave upon which electric vehicles rose again. While numerous 1960s visionaries were correctly touting EVs as a solution, the manufacturing technology was, unfortunately, not up to the vision.

Figure 3-7 shows a chronological summary of what was being done by the primary electric vehicle developers in the United States, Europe, and Japan during the four waves.

EV interest during the first wave fell into two distinctly different perceptual camps:

• Individuals who successfully converted existing internal combustion vehicles • Manufacturers who could not figure out how to make the existing technology justify the financial figures, let alone figure out how to market EVs to an

American public that wanted quick and large internal combustion engine automobiles

Individuals Lead the Way

Converting was easy enough, and also inexpensive. Then, as today, you picked a vehicle shell—hopefully light in weight and/or easy to modify—added a motor, controller, and batteries, and went. Unfortunately, the most available motors in the appropriate size were decades-old war surplus aircraft starter DC motors; do-it-yourself controllers were barely more sophisticated than their turn-of-the-century counterparts; and battery technology, although cosmetically improved by modern manufacturing and packaging techniques, was virtually unchanged from 1900. As the most readily available controllers came from golf carts that typically used six 6-volt batteries (36 volts), and aircraft starter motors were typically rated at 24 to 48 volts, many first-time do-it-yourself EV attempts suffered from poor performance, and contemporary internal combustion muscle car owners of the 1960s just laughed at them.

Then someone discovered motors were actually underrated to ensure long life, and began driving them at 72 to 96 volts. Some early owners found they could make simple, non-current-limiting controllers, and create vehicles that could easily embarrass any internal combustion muscle car at a stoplight. For a conceptual picture of this, imagine a subway traction motor in a dune buggy. In fact, these owners simply left the starting resistance out of a series DC motor, or equivalently diddled a shunt or compound motor. A series DC motor delivers peak torque at stall, and while starting currents were enormous, these early innovators just made sure they had a load attached when they switched on the juice. The immediate result was a rush. Predictably, the longer-term results were burned-out motors and, occasionally, broken drive shafts or axles. But the sanely driven and controlled 72- to 96-volt EV conversions were not bad at all. This was the 1960s, and the Electric Auto Association was founded in 1967. Manufacturers Don’t

Established internal combustion engine vehicle manufacturers in the late 1960s did not produce much in the way of electric vehicles. The General Motors’ XP512E Series (GM’s ElectroVairs—converted 1964 and 1966 Corvairs—and ElectroVan—a converted 1966 GMC HandiVan) could have been easily replicated by any individual except for the ElectroVair’s high-cost silver-zinc batteries, and ElectroVan’s high-cost hydrogenoxygen fuel cells. Ford of Britain’s Comuta (even more easily replicated by anyone) and American Motors’ Amitron, like GM’s offerings, all resembled souped-up golf carts (though the Amitron was in a class by itself—it featured Gulton’s lithium batteries, a solid-state controller, 50-mph speed, and a 150-mile range). It was sad that numerous individuals could develop EV solutions far superior to anything put forth by the giant industrial corporations that had helped to put a man on the moon in the same decade. The problem was not that these corporations lacked talent, money, or technology. The problem was that corporate thinking of this era was locked into a mode that