IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2023 - 23

and socioeconomic conditions, energy and environmental
policies, systems of energy conversion
and industrial production, and material practices of
innovation. " What this means in concrete terms is
the following:
First, the near-miss EV revival of the 1990s, best
exemplified by General Motors' (GM's) Impact/EV1
program, grew out of several decades of research and
development focused on addressing the persistent
problems of photochemical smog, on the one hand,
and the on-again, off-again crises associated with the
pricing and supply of crude oil, on the other hand.
Second, the current EV era, that of high-end firms
like Tesla, stems, in large part, from the investment
patterns and innovative strategies of Silicon Valley.
Contributions by EV enthusiasts before, during, and
between the second and third waves were vital, too.
Age of Auto Electric carefully unpacks all of this.
Following an introductory chapter, Eisler begins
with the post-WWII struggle against smog. This led
not only to the development of emissions controls
for ICE vehicles and the rise of a persistent pattern of
automaker resistance to environmental regulations,
but also to research programs at GM on battery-driven
cars and fuel cells and at Ford on solid-state ionic
batteries. None of this did anything to persuade
either company that EVs could be profitable.
Chapter 3 carries the story forward through the
1980s. In the 1970s, energy conservation became the
primary motivation for EV research, backed by direct
federal support. In the 1980s, however, with gasoline
prices rapidly falling and mainstream automakers
ever more certain that electric traction could never
be profitable, the Reagan administration slashed
funding for battery-based EV research and development.
Federal dollars began to flow instead to what
Eisler describes as " the hydrogen imaginary " : the
dream of a (distant) future of clean and cheap propulsion
based on hydrogen fuel cells. Automakers
preferred the hydrogen imaginary to battery-based
EVs precisely because functional and cost-effective
fuel cells were always well beyond the horizon, a
promising line of research that generated positive
publicity but did not threaten their profitable ICE
sales. In other words, the hydrogen imaginary was
an early example of very effective " greenwashing. "
Chapter 4 brings the State of California to the fore
to get to the heart of the 1990s EV revival. Air-quality
officials there passed a rule in 1990 requiring automakers
to sell zero-emissions vehicles (ZEVs) in
September 2023
that state at a rate of 2% of sales by the end of that
decade, and 10% by the middle of the next. Better
known simply as " the mandate, " it sent automakers
scrambling both to develop " compliance cars " for
the California market and to fight the new requirement
in every way they could, including continued
promotion of the hydrogen imaginary. But by far the
most important result of the mandate came from GM,
where an ongoing research program to develop an
experimental EV called the Impact rapidly became
a more serious effort to deliver a marketable EV.
About 1,100 of the resulting vehicles, known commercially
as the GM EV1, were leased to customers in
the late 1990s. This marked the apogee of the 1990s
EV revival, for GM recalled and crushed nearly every
one of these cars in the early 2000s. Following Chapter
5, a brief history of hybrid propulsion centered on
the Toyota Prius, Eisler returns to the EV1 in Chapter
6 to analyze the partnership between GM and the
Ovonic Battery Company that made the ill-fated car
possible. Chapters 7-9 take a closer look at the role
of the hydrogen imaginary and the first generation
of hybrid cars in blunting California's ZEV mandate
and in helping doom the EV1.
The remaining chapters focus on the current era
of EV development. Eisler begins in Chapter 10 with
the origins of Tesla. Silicon Valley entrepreneurs
Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning founded this
firm in 2003 with a singular (if lofty) goal in mind: to
forever change the way we think about electric cars.
They planned to do this by building an all-battery
EV supercar-a ferociously torquey, Ferrari-beating
monster that would appeal to wealthy early adopters
whose favorable impressions would then trickle
down to the general public. Tesla's 2008 debut, the
Lotus-based Roadster, managed to do just that. Following
a brief return to hybrids with a detailed analysis
of the Chevrolet Volt in Chapter 11, Eisler then
resumes the all-electric story in Chapters 12 and 13 by
taking a closer look at the public reception of Tesla's
cars, as well as the federal stimulus and other support
(including Elon Musk's substantial controlling
investment) that has kept that firm afloat. He then
wraps up with a wonderful chapter, " The Life Electric, "
which documents, via a series of anonymized
interviews, what it is like to live with and rely upon
an all-electric car.
Age of Auto Electric covers a lot of ground. It
sheds new light on the EV1, the history of hybrids,
California's ZEV mandate, the many strands
of
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IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2023

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2023
