Why we have the cars we have

Though my initial interest in electric cars centered around the question of their feasibility--in other words, how soon would it be practical for me to get one?--my reading has taken me in a different direction.  I'm now more interested in the early history of the electric car (1890-1920s), when the electric car was first developed and then eclipsed by the gasoline-powered car.

 This reading has brought me to the question, "What drove (pardon the pun) the history of the electric car, from rise to sudden death?"  A recent documentary, "Who Killed the Electric Car?" focuses on a similar question in regards to the fate of the electric cars that were in the development phase in the 1990s.  That film develops a conspiracy theory, pinning the blame on the powers that reside in the large oil companies.

One might ask, "Was it the same in the 1920s?"

But this isn't really the primary question--a question of fact--that most interests me.

I'm more interested in thinking about the larger question that is really at the crux of the debate over the electric car's demise (and recent reemergence): "What drives the history of technology?"  Or, to be more precise and specific, how much power does technology itself have in shaping its own history?"
It's not unusual for historians (professional and otherwise) to assert that technology drives history.  Most recently, for example, we've been introduced to the idea that Twitter, Facebook, and other forms of social media, now made readily-available via hand-held cell phones, have made possible the "Arab Spring," a series of revolutions and uprisings in Northern Africa and elsewhere.  Others have argued that the home computer is responsible for wide-spread changes in the world economy.  Earlier generations wrote about how the rise of the automobile changed the geography of America and American business and living arrangements.  This is "technological determinism," a theory of history that argues that technology drives (or even determines) history according to a logic all its own. If a technologically-superior widget comes into production (this theory argues), it will inevitably replace the technologically-inferior one, and it's technological superiority--and nothing else--will determine the course of history.

For the technological determinist, the gasoline-powered car replaced the electric car in the 1920s because it was technologically superior.  For the technological determinist, the electric car will ONLY replace the gasoline-powered car of today when the technology is superior.

Again, I'm less interested in the question of fact--WAS the gasoline-powered car technologically superior to the electric powered car of the 1920s--than I am with the question of how history works: is technological determinism the best way (or a valid way) to think about historical change?

Must we choose the "best" technology (best, as determined from a purely technological standpoint)?

Electric Cars--first thoughts

My reading so far has lead to a number of insights about electric cars.  Most significantly, I've learned about the history of the electric car, and this history might hold some ideas for the present and future of such cars.  I sort of assumed that the electric car was a new invention, the product of recent concerns for the environment or possibly a response to the (1970s) oil crisis.  Turns out that the electric car pre-dated the gasoline car.  Many of the first cars (1880s or so) were electric, and the technology and infrastructure around these cars was pretty impressive.  The demise of these cars was due to the cheap availability of gasoline, the fact that gas-powered cars could go faster than electric powered-cars (and why was this so important?), and the fact that the oil companies held huge political and economic clout.  Big surprise.

The infrastructure surrounding these early electric cars involve a system for swapping out batteries rather than plugging the cars into a direct power source.  I suspect that this limited the power of the batteries (since it would be impossible to lift out a huge, heavy battery).  I also wonder how much charge such batteries could hold.  I've requested a book from the BPL to learn more about this.  All current electric car models (Chevy Volt, Nissan Leaf, etc.) use batteries that remain in the car and that are charged, and this solves the size and power issue but raises another problem: the need to create a (national?) network of charging stations.  [I've found a site that describes a small network of such stations in Southern California and Arizona; I need to find out how this works.]

I'm wondering if there are insights to be gleaned from examining the early history of the electric car, lessons that might be useful for current thinking about these cars.

I'm also curious about the current capacities of these cars.  Most that I've seen on the web are tiny, boxy cars that look more like kit-cars than comfortable, consumer options.  I seem to recall that a city in Japan was using them in a wide-spread way, but I've not found out about this yet.

I've also been reading that there are huge advances in battery technology recently.  I wonder how promising this is.  Recently, Congress tried to cut funding for electric car research.  Will the powerful Oil lobby stall development of electric car technology?  Again, looking at developments in other countries (Japan, for sure, but perhaps other places as well) might offer some sense of a possible future.