Wallace's World August 3, 2010, 4:35PM EST

The Electric Car Might Be the Perfect Second Ride

Electric cars won't soon replace combustion engines. As a second family vehicle, they can save both money and natural resources

Story Tools

(This story has been updated to correct an error about the IRS tax deduction.)

"The long-suffering poor will rise up and bless Mr. Edison." —the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 6, 1903, on word that Thomas Edison would build a $450 electric car.

It was in 1902 that Studebaker Brothers Manufacturing decided to enter the automobile industry as a sideline to its profitable wagon business. At first, because electrics were then the top volume sellers, the company's owners believed they were the vehicles of the future. One of their first electric cars was delivered to the New York home of Grace Fish, daughter of J.M. Studebaker and wife of the company's executive committee chairman.

Grace's Studebaker's electric car was simplicity itself. To move forward, all one had to do was push the drive lever ahead. On Grace's first outing, a man walked in front of her car and she ran him over. Panicked, she threw the drive lever into reverse, running the man over a second time. Her attempt to dislodge him from her undercarriage resulted only in a third thrashing.

Surprisingly, the man was little the worse for Grace Fish's first outing in her electric car. She parked it there, swearing never to drive again.

Not too long after, electric automobiles were left parked, en masse, across America. The roaring success of the original 1901 Curved Dash Oldsmobile convinced the auto industry that gasoline-powered vehicles stood the best chance with consumers. In 1900 electric cars had been the volume leaders. They were dead 10 years later.

Today, 108 years after Grace Fish's first and last motoring adventure, the auto industry is promoting the idea that this past is our future.

nationwide recharging stations?

Along the way there have been promises of hydrogen-fuel-celled vehicles, turbine engines, natural gas-driven, and hybrid electrics—although, to many automotive engineers, the hybrids promise little more than what smaller, simpler diesel engines could deliver. The latest consensus is that our automotive future will be filled with plug-in hybrids and electric cars. The only question is whether most people will pay the high price of admission.

In the past the American public hasn't taken to smaller cars, much less those that could easily strand people miles from home if their battery discharged completely. Moreover, a common thought is that for electric cars to reach a reasonable level of acceptance, the government would need to build nationwide recharging stations to ease the fears of timid consumers that electric cars won't get them home.

Both fears can be assuaged with knowledge. Electric cars will be as convenient as those powered by gasoline (or the coming natural gas vehicles). Plug-in hybrids don't need expensive new government infrastructure to recharge on the road.

Much has been made about the three top electric cars that will hit the market soon. In order of media impact they're the Chevrolet Volt, the Nissan (NSANY) Leaf, and the Mitsubishi (MMTOF:US) i-MiEV. General Motors has announced the price of the Volt at about $40,000, less the $7,500 federal tax rebate; Nissan has posted an after-rebate price of $25,280; and a Mitsubishi executive has suggested a possible net-after-rebate price of $22,000 for that company's vehicle. In July, Honda (HMC) and Volkswagen (VOW) both promised plug-in hybrids and pure electric cars for the U.S. market within two years.