On Monday, October two, seventeen, General Motors officials announced a big move for the company. By twenty twenty three, the manufacturer plans to add twenty new vehicles that get their power either from electric batteries or from fuel cells. Mark Royce, the global product development chief of GM, went even further, saying the company believes in an all electric future. I'm Jonathan Strickland, and this is tech stuff Daily. Here's a fun fact. Once upon a time, the electric car was
the present. At that time was the earliest days of the automobile. Inventors in the eighteen twenties and eighteen thirties began to experiment with electricity as a means to create mechanical energy for vehicles. Clever folks in Hungary, the Netherlands, and the United States began to build small scale vehicles testing electricity's potential, which is sort of a pun I guess. In eighteen thirty two, a man named Robert Anderson built a horseless carriage that used electricity to power the wheels
of the gadget. It wasn't particularly powerful or efficient, and it would be a few decades before anyone made significant strides toward building an electric vehicle that would actually be practical for the purposes of transportation. The late nineteenth century was a really exciting time for electrical engineers. By nineteen hundred, electric cars made up about a third of all the vehicles on the road. Around that same time, other inventors
were working on the internal combustion engine. The first example of such a fuel driven engine being used to move a vehicle was an eighteen seventy in Vienna, when Siegfried Marcus installed a gasoline engine on a hand cart. So electric cars had a head start on internal combustion. Why then did the world turn to engines running on fossil fuels rather than electric vehicles from the start, After all, electric cars were comparatively quiet and clean if you look
at steam or gasoline powered vehicles. Not surprisingly, the deciding factor came down to price. When Henry Ford unveiled the Model T, which is company could build in larger numbers through the new strategy of mass production, the price tag was almost a third of what it cost to buy an electric roadster. The gas powered cars became more practical as regions began to improve the road systems linking towns together.
It became possible to take a long car trip, one that exceeded the driving distance your typical electric vehicle could manage on a full battery charge. Fueling stations were a faster, more convenient way to extend the vehicle's range than an infrastructure that would support a national fleet of electric cars. The internal combustion engine took center stage and pushed the electric car off to the side. Things are changing now.
Not only is there more of a support system for electric vehicles, we've seen several advances in battery manufacturing that are starting to bring prices down. That's one of the big goals for Tesla's Giga factories to bring down the cost of individual batteries through mass production. That will help lower the barrier of adoption for electric vehicles in general. General Motors isn't the only manufacturer of traditionally gasoline powered
vehicles to jump on the electric slide. Volvo has made a similar promise, as has the ultra luxury auto manufacturer Astid Martin. That's right, in a few years, James Bond might be cruising around in an all electric, hand crafted luxury sports car and then it will likely blow up somehow. General Motors has the distinction of being one of the largest auto manufacturers in the world, which is really what
makes the company's strategy noteworthy. But considering there are many regions in the world in serious discussions about banning diesel and gasoline vehicles, you could argue this is a self preservation move and an attempt to get ahead of that curve. In fact, China, the world's largest car market, may move to ban such vehicles within a decade or two. It could be that General Motors sees the writing on the wall and wants to avoid the economic squeeze of having
fewer markets to sell to. Either way, it's good news for electric vehicle fans. One other thing we should mention is that while electric cars produced no greenhouse gas emissions, you have to take a big picture view of the system to really understand the environmental impact of an electric vehicle. For one thing, whereas the electricity coming from, if the answer is a cold power plant, then the source of pollution just shifts from the car to the car's power source.
Moving to electric vehicles makes the most sense when the source of your electricity is a renewable one that doesn't depend on fossil fuels. The manufacturing process itself, particularly for car batteries, can also be a source of environmental concern. So while we should feel pretty good about moving away from fossil fuels, which not only can cut down on greenhouse gas emissions but also improve national security by reducing a nation's dependence upon foreign oil, it doesn't mean we
should be less vigilant overall. To learn more about how electric motors work, why battery technology can't keep up with Moore's Law, and everything else related to tech, subscribe to the Tech Stuff podcast. It's the big brother to this show, and each episode is a deep dive on a tech topic that's all for me for now, See you next time.