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Taking Charge: The Electric Automobile in America Paperback – June 22, 2010

4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 5 ratings
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The tumultuous history of inventors and corporations who have tried to bring the electric car to the market.

Amazingly, in 1900 28 percent of all cars were electric. By 1920 the electric car had all but vanished and gas-powered cars dominated the market. In Taking Charge, Schiffer deftly explores how cultural factors, not technological ones, explain the rise of gas-guzzling cars. Schiffer brings the history of the electric car into the present, arguing that despite the Detroit Big Three’s reluctance to make electric cars, their time has finally arrived.
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Previous page
  1. Print length
    240 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Smithsonian Books
  4. Publication date
    June 22, 2010
  5. Dimensions
    6 x 0.6 x 9 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    1588340767
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1588340764
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“A cracking good read.”—Technology and Culture

“The car of the future turns out to be the car of the past, according to Schiffer in this peppy look at the electric car’s Edwardian infancy.”—Kirkus Reviews

“Much more than a historical overview, Schiffer puts his anthropology training to good effect in the text, livening his recitation with fascinating details about contemporary personalities and cultural settings. His volume provides the best insight to date of how and why electric vehicles faltered [in the past], and why that result was due more to culture than technology.”—Environment

“Part car-nut's history, part social history, this is a fine resource for popular culture and American Studies collections.”—Booklist

About the Author

Michael Brian Schiffer is professor of anthropology at the University of Arizona in Tucson and the author of seven books, including The Portable Radio in American Life (1991).

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Smithsonian Books; Reprint edition (June 22, 2010)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 240 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1588340767
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1588340764
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.6 x 9 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 5 ratings

About the author

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Michael B. Schiffer

Michael B. Schiffer

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I am a retired archaeologist and historian of technology. I taught for 39 at the University of Arizona, and was the Fred A. Riecker Distinguished Professor of Anthropology. These days I am writing mystery novels. The first four are co-authored with my wife, Annette Schiffer: A Buzz About Campus, Holy Smoke!, A Tough Nut to Crack, and Vintage Crimes. Two more are in the works, all part of the series, The Oak Grove Chronicles. These novels are set in a fictional town, Oak Grove, in California, where there is a state University. The unusual crimes, including murders, are solved by the collaboration of a Sheriff's detective, Alan Bluestein, and a forensic archaeologist, Laura Mancini. In addition to keeping readers entertained with our warmhearted blend of serious and silly, we manage to poke fun at university life. We live in northern Virginia and enjoy travel and spending time with grandchildren.

Recently I have sole authored a political mystery, Scoop of the Century: The Fateful Odyssey of Reporter Stella Weiss. Here is the blurb: Three months after the commission of a notorious assassination, the official investigation stalls. An ambitious and daring Black reporter at the L.A. Times, Stella Weiss, unearths the truth, writing about the perpetrators’ backgrounds, surprising motivations, and how they pulled it off. Shortly after her story is published, Stella disappears. Scoop of the Century is the suspenseful and fast-paced tale of the reporter’s extraordinary odyssey. In a master storyteller’s crisp and lively prose, the book’s memorable characters take readers along a riveting journey.

Customer reviews

4.7 out of 5 stars
4.7 out of 5
5 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Reuben Gathright
5.0 out of 5 stars 60 electric cabs once ran in New York city, read how they did it!
Reviewed in the United States on October 24, 2008
Verified Purchase
Amazon is a wonderful place to go book browsing. Not only will you find new books but also a staggering cross-referenced selection of out of print materials, iconizisized and eligible for super-saver shipping. Taking Charge The Electric Automobile In America came up in a search for electric vehicle book. Weighing in at 225 pages, I felt a book on electric vehicle history was worth a read. Michael Schiffer surprised me though with the truth about how wide spread electric vehicle usage was in early America. The discussion of how the power industry operates will give you the reader a better view of how much energy is out there and ready to be used. All of this combines into a somewhat stale yet important volume about early American history.

The goal of the book is to examine and explain why electric vehicles disappeared in the early 1920's. The author walks us through the initial distribution of power in the United States and the problems associated with DC in a wide area network. Then, the rollout and problems associated with lead-acid batteries of the time, particularly when used in a fleet of sixty cabs in New York city. The lead-acid batteries were sensitive to the bumps and vibrations of daily travel causing them to last less than six months. Today we expect no less than a two year life-span out of our lead-acid batteries in cars. Moving on, Thomas Edison, a prominent figure in early battery research, and Henry Ford converge in a battle of gasoline vs electric. We all know the ultimate conclusion but the methods both men used are quite sinister.

Michael covers three theories at the opening of this book to explain why this happened: vested interest, technological constraint and consumerist. The theories were new to me and gave me a much needed foundation to debate the demise of electric vehicles in the 1990's. While coverage of the theories here would be worthwhile, I leave you the reader the opportunity to examine them and offer your opinion in a followup review to my own. These theories are being tested even now in Key West, FL on a smaller scale. Over the past two years electric vehicle rentals have quietly pressed the gasoline moped rental market share to an alarming 50% by my best estimates and through interviews over the past weekend. Hotels now offer charging services for these six passenger mini cars to guests at no extra charge (no pun intended). I wish you could have seen my face as my cab pulled me up to the Casa Marina hotel and I saw a line of Think EV's being charged!

We can learn a lot from studying the past. You can also see proof of this "history repeats itself" proverb in this book. Taking Charge was published in 1994, before GM's EV1 program was leasing cars. The vested interest theory presented herein is eerily similar to how GM squashed the EV1. To drive the point home, General Motors and Ford are credited in this book with killing the first generation of electric cars!
One person found this helpful
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Amazon Customer
4.0 out of 5 stars Light and interesting
Reviewed in the United States on May 21, 2008
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This kind of book is an worthwhile since so many people are discussing the pros and cons of electric cars. Invariably mention is made of the fact that electric cars have as long a history as gasoline cars. This book is more or less about that history. It is not heavy on lots of details so it makes for a fairly interesting and fast-moving read. In covering the history of the electric car, the author also covers the history of gasoline cars, the development of central power stations in the US, and some social customs such as touring. There are a number of interesting details about that time period, and some of the main characters like Thomas Edison and Henry Ford, that you may not have thought about before. While the book talks about different issues surrounding the rise and fall of the electric car, the main conclusion appears to be that battery capacity and range have, and will continue to be the main obstacle to acceptance of electric cars. The last chapter of the book attempts to look ahead. Since the book dates to before the whole GM EV-1 fiasco, the predictions seems a bit naive and optimistic in light of what we now know happened, and the whole issue of high gas prices was not a factor when the book was written. While this book doesn't contribute a whole lot of new information relevant to the current discussion of electric cars, it does give a nice background to their history in the US.
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Cho, Sungwon
5.0 out of 5 stars A Must Read
Reviewed in the United States on November 19, 2017
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If you are curious about the history of electric vechicles, you must read this!
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gruendeman@BBS.UG.EDS.COM
5.0 out of 5 stars Mobile America, history of electric cars & the choices we ma
Reviewed in the United States on December 9, 1997
This book starts out with a history of how Americans became mobile and the choices we made with respect to bicycles, mass transit and cars. It then goes into modest detail about the development of power generating stations needed to support electric cars and into great detail about the development of electric cars and how they fit into U.S. society. Development of gas cars is covered in depth only to compare the technologies and illustrate the choices we made. By reading this, you know a great deal about transportation technology and the society that developed it. The last chapter is all about the present and near term future of electric cars. The book offers an excellent depiction of how we have become the mobile society (or mobile mess?) that we became. Recommended for history buffs and especially for electric car enthusiasts.
7 people found this helpful
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Charles Hall
4.0 out of 5 stars Great early history of the electric car
Reviewed in the United States on November 10, 2007
This book concentrates on the early commercial history of the electric car. Only a small final chapter is devoted to progress in electric cars since the 20's.

What makes the book so interesting are the recurring themes of electric cars, present since their inception. "They're too slow", "They don't have the range", "new batteries will be coming out next year"... all of which apply to the current discussion of electric cars in 2007.

Even hybrid cars were experimented with very early on, and one wishes for a bit more technical information on those. Plus it would be nice to know what happened to Edison's replacement for the lead-acid battery. Is it still in use today? Or is it extinct?

The last chapter is also fun. His prognostications are not too far off the mark. He predicted the next innovation would not come from the Big 3 automakers, no matter what they said they were going to do. That turned out to be true. He also predicted we would have some options for buying electric cars by now. In that he was wrong, but we do have the Prius and Insight.

So, all in all, a fine early history, but you'll still want to know more to fill in that gap from 1920-2007!
2 people found this helpful
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