A century after they enjoyed their first wave of popularity, electric vehicles are back. Advances in technology have sparked a new wave of offerings, but sales forecasts continue to be dim. Even in the City of Light, E-Vs still face many of the same challenges that killed the industry a hundred years ago.
Carmakers reintroduced electric vehicles to the market this year with seven new models.
But E-Vs actually have been around since the 1830s and the invention of electromagnetic cart. From the cart evolved the cars that were manufactured in Buffalo in the early 1900s by the Buffalo Electric Carriage Company. President William McKinley was even whisked away to the hospital in an electric ambulance after being shot at the 1901 Pan-Am Exposition.
The Carriage Company, like the industry then, struggled and eventually became the Buffalo Electric Vehicle Company. David Torke is a local activist and blogger who points out the historic significance of the factory on his Mid-town walking tours. He said, although Buffalo was the City of Light, electric cars a century ago had many of the same drawbacks as today's models.
"You had Frank Babcock's electric vehicles priced at about three-thousand-dollars apiece, which in today's dollars is equivalent to 50-thousand. Down the street a little bit, Henry Ford was mass producing automobiles at $500 apiece, which is equivalent to about $10,000 today," said Torke.
Torke said this price disadvantage limited the company's customer base to the wealthiest consumers.
"Of course, Ford wins because he was producing cars at a price point that his employees could purchase, and that was not the case with Frank Babcock. His market probably included the doctors and professionals one block away on Linwood Avenue," said Torke.
Also like today, electric cars had limited power and range compared to their gasoline competition. But what secured gasoline's dominance for the future, according to Torke, was the introduction of the electric starter in 1913. It eliminated the need to manually crank-start gasoline cars and instantly elevated them to the same easy level of operability as electric.
The Buffalo Electric Vehicle Company closed its doors at the corner of Main and Northhampton Streets in 1916. In 2005, the building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places and has since been converted into apartments. This year, car companies are once again making a big push to convert electric cars into sales.
Ray Stoklosa, Marketing Manager for Basil Chevrolet, took me on a test drive of his new Chevy Volt.
"When you power it up, it's kinda like turning on your laptop. Powering down, you just push the button (noise) and it's off," said Stokosa.
Stoklosa said he hasn't seen a lot of interest past early adopters like himself. Consumers again face higher sticker prices and limited power and range.
"The expression that's used is 'range anxiety.'," said Stoklosa.
The University at Buffalo's Martin Casstevens helps businesses compete through innovative energy use. Technically, Castevens said the future of the industry hinges on making a better battery, which UB is very involved in. To gain widespread popularity, he says, electrics will continue to need jumpstarts from Uncle Sam.
"This is really where the role of government comes in. Chevy Volt, right now, its sticker price is about $40,000, but the federal government stepped in and said we're going to put a $7,500 tax credit toward the purchase of that, which starts to make new technologies able to be adopted," said Castevens.
In fact, electric car sales hit a high of 350,000 units in 2007 because of federal tax incentives, but have since declined. Paul Stasiak, President of the Niagara Frontier Automobile Dealers Association, agrees that government will play a greater role in determining the future of the industry than consumer tendencies.
"The true electric car today, in its format and its pricing and its structure, probably doesn't lend itself to that person who wants to be environmentally friendly. The tradeoff on the savings isn't what it'll be for the savings for gasoline," said Stasiak.
More so than incentives, Stasiak wants to see reasonable EPA standards that take into account all supply chain costs.
"I think there are various elected officials making decisions that really don't have any comprehension of what goes into developing a car. They may talk to an engineer or a design person that's got a vision, but he's got an individual vision. He doesn't have a mass production vision," said Stasiak.
Stasiak said his association has been talking with the Buffalo Medical Corridor to develop a parking lot that includes charging stations for electric vehicles, as well as other innovations.
Buffalo was the City of Light, he says. Perhaps now it needs to start being the City of Electric.