Featured The lost history of the electic car and the future of transport

Poor recap of history that many (correctly) learned via "who killed the electric car".
Example of the poor history here - from the article;

thank you captain history Mr. author... but the 90's birthed Stan Ovshinsky's nickel metal hydride EV battery tech;

NIHF Inductee Stanford R. Ovshinsky Invented the Nickel Metal Hydride Battery

If the other wasn't ignorant he'd know Stan's Tech is stil running around the landscape to this day AND prior to getting lithium off the ground. Thank you Stan. The author? not so much
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Its the guardian, what do you expect. ... ;=)

They probably should have said without commercial success until lithium batteries were used. There is some opinionated history in "who killed the electric car" too. Still those batteries were definitely good enough for phevs and some short range leaf like bevs. Car designs would have been ready to take off and be commercial successes if companies like gm and honda and toyota had invested in them instead of fuel cells and lobbying against plug-ins.


That ovonics 26 kwh battery weighed as much as current (2020 design) 82 kwh tesla battery, and likely cost at least 3x more to manufacture. Energy density of the cells were 80 wh/kg versus 260 wh/kg today, with the pack at 54 wh/kg versus 162 wh/kg for the tesla long range. Ovonics cells likely would have improved basf that now holds the patents had them up to 140 wh/kg in 2015, but the writing in 2003 was on the wall already for lithium cells.

 

And where did range anxiety come from? Was it created as a PR stunt by Fossil Fool industry? Didn't seem to be much of a concern a century ago when this electric car drove over 100+ miles to Mt. Rainier.