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why it has taken 60 or more years for us to implement this into mainstream cars
Energy density. Making slow electric vehicles with a very limited range is easy. Selling slow electric vehicles with a very limited range to potential customers, who could buy a much faster ICE car with effectively unlimited range instead, is hard.
It occurred to me yesterday that since I can remember, milk floats were always electric so I figured they must have been made at least 25 years ago. I've just looked it up and they began to become mainstream in the 40s*!
I understand they would have had low speed and small ranges but can anyone explain to me why it has taken 60 or more years for us to implement this into mainstream cars when seemingly we could have had electric vehicles in urban environments decades ago?
*electric vehicles apparently have been produced for commercial uses since the 1900s