Welcome to season three of MTE's Plugged in podcast.

This season, we will continue to explore the world of electric vehicles.

Whether you're a seasoned EV driver or you're just beginning your journey into electric vehicles, this podcast is for you.

For a more enhanced experience, be sure to watch the video version of this podcast that will be linked in the show notes.

Hello, everyone.

Welcome to MTE's Plugged in podcast.

I'm Brandon Wagner, and I'm here with Amy Byerse.

Hey, Brandon.

Happy to be here today.

Today we're going to talk about the history of EV's.

Ev's started probably around, like, when we really started seeing, like, the leaf and the Tesla.

It was probably 13 to 15 years ago, and then it kind of died out pretty quickly, I think, because there wasn't that charging infrastructure there.

Now we're seeing a resurgence.

We're getting the Chargers out there.

All the manufacturers had jumped on board, and so there's so many models.

And so we're kind of.

We're seeing it a lot.

But the reality is that electric vehicles have been around a lot longer than even 15 years ago.

So I've asked Brandon to do some homework and study some stuff, and I've got some questions for you on the history of EV's.

Are you ready?

We'll see.

We'll see.

Okay, so the first question I have for you is, when were the first electric vehicles developed?

So I had to look this up a little bit, Amy.

Obviously, I didn't know off the top of my head.

I know, I know.

Surprising.

But it's kind of interesting.

I want to go back a little bit to the early 17 hundreds.

The steam engine is starting to get developed, and about 100 years goes by, and we're starting to see the first steam engine railway.

And that's around 1825.

So steam engine's been around for about 100 years.

This is a radical new development and transportation.

But right around that 1825, just a few years after that, was the first EV that was sort of created.

And we'll talk a little bit more about that.

But for just a moment, imagine, you know, we talk about how things have changed in the last ten years.

For us, during this early 18 hundreds, a lot was changing rapidly.

I made a few notes here.

One of the things, in 1821, Michael Faraday made the first electric motorhouse.

And we're going to see, in about 15 years after that, the first electric vehicle is going to be made.

At the same time, people are still getting used to the steam engine and public transportation on the railway.

We're seeing the first electric telegraph.

And so this is a big boom of industrial technology that's improving people's lives.

And the internal combustion engine is actually not on the roadmap right now.

It's really steam engine.

I guess I just.

You watch all the movies in the early 18 hundreds, and they're still having candles in their house.

So I guess I just wasn't even thinking that there was really stuff being done with electricity at that point.

But I guess it was, you know, maybe not for the masses, but certainly, you know, once they started really harnessing electricity, they started building the motors and the electric cars not.

Not far after that.

That's a bit surprising to me.

It is when you, especially when you consider the Civil War hasn't even happened yet.

So, yeah, it's for me, when I getting to do something like this is fun, because I don't realize that how messed up my timeline is of history and how out of order I have it until I go back and start studying.

Right.

I mean, as you were sitting there doing the timeline, I'm like, is that right?

Could that be right?

Yeah, that's crazy.

But then I'm like, well, you know, Ben Franklin, that was way before that when he flew that kite.

So I guess, you know, the theory was there for a while, but.

So my next question is for you is, who were some of the early pioneers in electric vehicle development?

Yeah, well, so there's two that kind of come to mind right off the bat.

One of them is a guy named Robert Anderson.

He was a scottish inventor, and he made this really crude electric carriage.

And that was right around the mid 1830s, but it worked on non rechargeable batteries.

So once the batteries were used up, you're done.

At the same time.

Around the same time, there was a hungarian inventor.

I'm going to say his name wrong, agnost Jedlick, or probably Yedliche.

But he made some contributions to EV's.

In the late 1820s, he made a small scale model of an electric motor vehicle, a vehicle powered by that electric motor we talked about, and he called it a lightning magnetic self rotor.

It was a small vehicle, but his tinkering sort of was a base that people could build on later on.

And then Thomas Parker in England, just a few years later, in the 1880s, he built some practical electric cars, and he was sort of the pioneer for the clean energy movement.

He liked the idea of reducing pollution, even at that point.

So, remember, steam engines are kind of going on right now, but he wanted to focus on conserving some resources.

He was a major step forward in what came later on.

Well, what about the significance of electric vehicles in the early 20th century?

We'll move up a little bit on the timeline.

So Ev's, a lot of times people tell us one of the things they like is that they're quieter.

During that time, it was significantly quieter.

You know, the gasoline engines, they were much louder and they were cleaner.

I mean, we have a lot of technology now that helps reduce emissions, but back then that didn't exist.

And so Ev's were considered, had some advantages.

They were more reliable.

You know, those gasoline cars back then, you had to crank them to start them.

So that was a little bit of convenience there.

Ev's had more of a presence in the delivery industry and taxis than the gasoline counterpart, but they started to decline.

And the reason for that really was because Henry Ford, Henry Ford Sort of was not only a pioneer in the auto industry, he was a pioneer in US manufacturing.

And, you know, Henry Ford was fond of saying that you could buy a Ford Model T in any color you wanted, as long as it's black.

But he was very much repeatable in making his vehicles, which brought the cost to produce down, and EV's could no longer compete in a cost competitive situation.

So that kind of, I guess, leads to my next question, or maybe you've already answered my next question, which was, how did the rise of the internal combustion engine impact the electric vehicles?

So a couple, you know, obviously the Ford made a big step forward, but combined with that, the road infrastructure was getting built out, and personal vehicles at the time were.

You weren't really thinking you were going to use them for long distance traveling.

That was what the railway was for.

You know, the railroad industry was, I think, the biggest industry for a while in the US.

So once that road started getting longer and they found some petroleum reserves, of course, at the time, you know, there wasn't as much knowledge about the emissions and that sort of thing.

So they saw a cheap source of fuel in these cars, and it just allowed for them to naturally adopt using these cars to go longer distances.

And the EV's didn't have that range.

We're still talking about range anxiety today.

Imagine what it would've been like there.

Plus, Henry Ford, not only just what he was doing, he was always improving.

He had another quote that said, if he asked folks, what would you like to help your transportation?

They would say a faster horse.

But he was kind of a pioneer in his visioning.

And so he wasn't satisfied to just continue making vehicles like, he was, he was always improving the process, which made the cost to produce even lower.

And all of those things combined together just sort of made EV's more of a niche product.

So when did the interest in electric vehicles begin to revive again?

Like, when did it kind of turn back around to where people were looking at electric vehicles?

Yeah, a lot of time went by before that happened, but in the 1970s, we were seeing some energy crisis issues.

You've heard the stories about people waiting in line for the gas pumps for a mile.

And that was the first thing that really got manufacturers thinking about making EV's as an alternative source to fuel these vehicles.

And so General Motors in the nineties created the EV one.

And it's actually an interesting.

There's a documentary called who killed the electric cardinal?

You can rent it on prime.

We have one of our EV car club members, George Steinheimer.

He actually owned an EV one for a little while, but eventually GM bought all those back, and they destroyed all of them, except for a handful that are on display elsewhere.

But that started, that was a big step, and then it wasn't really until, I guess, in the late nineties and the two thousands when Toyota came out with the Prius and hybrids became popular.

And then the next step was 2008.

Tesla came out with their roadster, which we talked about.

EV's being a niche product.

That was kind of a niche product, obviously, but it was an eye turner.

It caught a lot of people's attention.

And then not long after that, in 2013, Nissan was making the leaf as MTE.

We had one of the original leaves.

We have another one of their newer models in our fleet.

But those were real major milestones in the EV history.

Yeah.

And I remember that time.

I remember it very well.

I was actually with Murphysboro electric department at that time, and we had a leaf as well.

And I think we went in, I think we partnered with Middle Tennessee Electric, and we went and had a wrap designed for it.

And so we each had them wrapped the same way.

Of course, you had your logo on yours, and we had the MeV logo on ours.

But I remember, first of all, I remember seeing the Teslas, and, I mean, when you very rare that you saw one.

And, I mean, if there was one, you know, it was like, oh, hey, in this parking lot, there's a Tesla.

So they were all, everybody's going to go to that parking lot and see that Tesla.

Or if you passed it, you're like, I passed a Tesla today.

It was crazy.

You know, there was a lot of talk about that, and then we got the leaf, and I was always a little nervous to drive it, I'm going to tell you.

I'm going to be honest.

And it was, because it was so quiet.

And I would be driving down in some of the downtown areas of Murfreesboro where a lot of people walk.

And I would have people, like, almost walk out in front of me, Orlando bicycles, just going and blowing because they're not hearing me.

And so you really had to be on guard when you, when you were driving it.

But, you know, it was an exciting time.

I think we put, I think that's, you know, when we put the charger at the chamber of commerce here in Murfreesboro and.

But then it just kind of petered out a little bit for a while, you know, it.

I think there was some of it, like with Tesla at that time, that was when their batteries would explode.

There was a lot of accidents where the cars were catching on fire.

I don't know if you remember that or not.

And so that was for about a year or so, and then it was just like, nothing.

Like you didn't really hear of it anymore.

I think we all.

We got rid of our lease.

You know, we had a hybrid escape at the time.

It's kind of what we went with.

And I think at that time we thought, okay, the future is the hybrid vehicle, like what the Prius was, the escape.

You know, other manufacturers were doing these hybrid vehicles, and that's kind of where we thought the industry would go, but, you know, it kind of took off again.

So what are some key milestones in the modern era, kind of where we are now of electric vehicles that made it different?

Like, what has made it different this time?

Well, I think that the first.

This is just my perspective on it, but I think the first round of those EV's that you were describing, they had sort of been introduced to the market as a niche product.

They were very much a product for drivers who were looking to make a very explicit step in reducing their carbon footprint that has a limited market, really.

I mean, you know, because people want to do that, but there's also a level of how much cost do we want to do that?

So you started having some new manufacturers come in and they realized that EV's are very fun.

They're a fun experience.

And I think they started marketing it a little bit more that way.

You still had that carbon advantage as well.

But fun sells, right?

So people will pay for fun.

So I think some of that happened.

I also think that there were some government incentives to help breakthrough in battery technologies allowed for longer range.

And we've talked about this before.

There's this chicken and egg thing of charging infrastructure.

Do you put the charging infrastructure in first and then the EV adoption follows, or do you wait until there's enough EV adoption to justify putting charging infrastructure in?

So all of those things sort of had to figure themselves out a little bit before we saw big, widespread adoption like we see today.

So how has the market for electric vehicles evolved in recent years?

Well, I think obviously range has improved quite a bit.

We talked about that first Nissan Leaf, and we're proud to serve Nissan, of course, but that first leaf, I would get in, and by the time I got on the interstate, the expected range was just dropping so fast.

There's newer model leaf that doesn't do that, and other EV's have kind of figured out how to give a realistic range.

I think that's a big deal.

Obviously, there's a variety of vehicles now that didn't exist before.

Used to, you could spot an EV from a mile away because it was always made in such a way that it stood out and almost had to look a little bit weird.

I mean, that, you know, I don't know why, but that was sort of the way it was.

And it was going to be limited to a sedan.

I mean, they, they were trying to build them.

They're going to be heavy because of the batteries, but they need them to be as light as possible to help with range.

So you're limited in your functionality.

But now we have trucks, we have suv's, we have industrial vans.

I was telling someone the other day, I don't know the last time I saw an Amazon delivery vehicle that wasn't an EV.

It's very strange how quickly that sort of happened.

Yeah, you kind of have to look for the tailpipe.

Like a lot of times we'll pass the car and my husband will be like, is that an ev?

And I have to wait for it to pass.

You know, I'm like, well, let me.

No, no.

Tell pipe.

Yeah, that's an Ev.

You know, it is harder to pick them out now.

Yeah.

Which I think is good.

I mean, yeah, it's helped, I think, with people when they look really strange.

I think people inherently thought, well, I have to have a certain lifestyle in order to adopt this, and I'm not sure I'm ready to adopt that lifestyle.

But when it's just, you know, we have a lot of f 150 lightnings.

They look just like the f 150s.

They do.

And when you drive down the road, nobody really knows that you're, you know, an Ev.

So I think that's a good thing.

So historically and today, what are some of the challenges faced by electric vehicles?

I think a major challenge that we are struggling with today is the holistic life of the vehicle, and we just don't have enough experience yet to have good answers.

There's a lot of concern about what happens to the battery at the end of life, but I also think there's some struggling with what is the end of life.

Are these batteries, can they go 100,000 miles?

Can they go a million miles?

I mean, different claims are being made by different battery manufacturers, and time will sort of tell, can they be recycled?

I think that's a major thing that we need to figure out before we.

That's going to be a point of hesitation for some folks to adopt.

And I think that the other part that's going to be really interesting is autonomous driving.

We're going to talk in another podcast more about that.

But there's some interesting things about autonomous driving.

If you're programming a car how to drive, and the car is driving down the road and someone is on the sidewalk and they trip and they fall in front of the car, what do you program the car to do?

Swerve and put the driver at risk or put the pedestrian at risk?

And there are some ethical things that have to be decided in this autonomous driving thing.

It's something that we don't really get into much, but I've heard some conferences speak about this, and it'll just be something that has to be figured out.

So that leads into kind of my last question for you today is we've looked at the past.

Let's look at the future.

So what is the future outlook, do you think, for electric vehicles?

Well, there's a lot I could talk about.

I could talk about battery improvements.

And I would rather, though, give you, like, my hot take.

Are you ready for this?

I'm ready.

Okay.

So, you know, there's a saying that I say a lot, and it's in the world of technology, people tend to overestimate what can happen in a year and underestimate what can happen in ten years.

And so this is my ten year estimation, and we can come back in ten years, and you can laugh at me how wrong I am, but I believe that within ten years, I don't think most people will own a vehicle anymore.

I think autonomous driving, autonomous vehicles are going to be the standard.

And I see us having more of an app, kind of like the rideshare app where you get up in the morning and you need to go to work.

You say, pick me up and take me to work, and a driverless car picks you up and drops you off, and then you're going on vacation with family.

This time.

I need a van and it's going to drive me on my vacation if I'm going to Lowe's or home depot.

I need a truck today.

And I think we'll have a monthly service relationship with a vehicle rather than owning one, which is going to be strange.

But when you consider the thought of I don't have to maintain it.

If it gets in a wreck, I don't have to worry about it, I don't have to pay insurance on it, and I don't have to box myself into do I want a sedan?

Do I want a truck?

Do I want, you know, these other style of vehicles.

I have the ultimate flexibility.

Someone will figure this out.

And I think that slowly but surely we're turning into subscription society anyway.

And autonomous vehicles opens that door.

Well, we'll see.

I'm not gonna lie, that scares me a little bit.

It is scary.

Like, I, you know, of course I'm a control freak.

I want control and then I'm giving, you know, I don't know.

We'll see.

We'll come back in ten years and we'll have this discussion.

So, Brandon, this has been all very, very interesting.

And, you know, it is a very exciting, growing industry that has a very long history that a lot of people don't realize.

And I am looking forward.

I don't know, Al, after you've said that, I don't know if I'm looking forward to see what the future holds or not.

But we'll see what the future holds for electric vehicles.

Thanks to everyone for listening today.

If you have any questions about MTE's EV ready program, nightflex rate, or the EV car club, or anything EV related, go to drivev.com or email us@evcarclubte.com dot.

Until next time, plug in, power up and drive safe.