CONCEPT
The Electric Car Case
Basalla's paradigmatic case of selection environment trumping technical superiority: one-third of American automobiles in 1900 were electric — quieter, cleaner, easier to operate — and by 1920 they had virtually disappeared. The better technology lost. Not temporarily. For a century.
In 1900, one-third of all automobiles on American roads were electric. They were quiet, clean, easy to operate, and required none of the hand-cranking, gear-shifting, and mechanical expertise that gasoline cars demanded. By most measures a rational consumer might apply, they were the superior technology. By 1920, they had virtually disappeared. The case is Basalla's most powerful illustration of the principle that the survival of a technology has almost nothing to do with technical superiority. The gasoline automobile won through a constellation of selection-environment forces: the petroleum industry's distribution infrastructure, the cultural association of loud engines with masculine power, the mass-production economics that made gasoline cars cheaper than battery-heavy electrics, and the self-reinforcing dynamics of adoption. The electric car was technically viable. The selection environment selected against it.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The specific forces that killed the early electric car are worth cataloguing because they