Electric cars are all the buzz again. Although there are very few data points, this seems to happen on a demi-century cycle. The first electric car rolled out of the garage … er, barn … in the mid-1830’s. The batteries of the era didn’t get Robert Anderson’s electric carriage much further. There was another upsurge of interest at the dawn of the 20^th century but Kettering’s invention of the electric starter for the gasoline car ironically helped to put combustions engines into mass production and that quickly killed the market for early electric cars.

 

There were some waves of interest in the second half of the 20^th century when gas prices peaked along with the discovery of the environment but by this time the oil infrastructure was so embedded in the industrial and social fabric that it was impossible to dislodge it by electric engine innovation on its own. So here we are in 2010 with all-electric vehicles like Tesla and Volt grabbing headlines at the annual Detroit Auto Show.

 

Old wine in new bottles, or is this wave of enthusiasm really something different?

 

Our everyday notion of invention is a sudden flash in the inventor’s mind. We speak of Edison inventing the electric light bulb as if he woke from one of his signature cat naps and walked over to his workbench and put one together. (There is a great Edison joke here, but I’ll spare you.) Successful innovations, however, require a serendipitous intertwining of multiple factors both technical and commercial at a particular moment in time. Individuals may invent new product components and corporations may invent new business plans but unless there is a critical mass of all the elements needed for a self-sustained economic existence, the innovation will fail in the marketplace.

 

Paradoxically, this is why it makes sense for the innovation-minded entrepreneurs to try and try again. Since no one entity can control all the factors needed for success of a new technology, let alone force those factors to all work together in the market, it makes sense to probe reality on a regular basis to see if the time is right for market lift off.

 

So is the time right for the electric car? Given the number of key innovations and business factors that have come together in the past few years and the proliferation of companies that are committed to making these factors work together, it certainly seems that this decade is more auspicious than the previous three swings that inventors made at mass market electric cars. Electric vehicles have already found a niche in the form of off-road golf carts and their utility cart cousins.

 

Segway – recently acquired – has also found a niche albeit a much, much smaller one.  The companies stepping up to the production of “real” electric autos can leverage longer range batteries and an emerging re-charging infrastructure. If the next stage of innovation reduces costs to an affordable level, we may have all the requirements for self-sustained growth of the electric vehicle market.

 

Consider the following. How far does a typical car owner drive every day? Who drives the typical second family car? What are the top three features that new car buyers say they want to have in their next vehicle? Anything coming into focus? That next car is probably not going to be a $97,000 sportster that can go from 0 to 60 in 17 nanoseconds.

 

How about an affordable, eco-friendly vehicle with built-in iPhone (News - Alert) and GPS? How about a car with remote control door and cargo hold opening system? How about wireless recharging as parking lot freebie down at Sam’s Club? How about Internet monitoring and data sync while parked at home?

 

Now suppose you could put that package together for about $10,000. Does a second family car start to take on new meaning? Consumers don’t necessarily need to own two long-distance, road-trip cars. Why not buy a must-have electric car for everyday driving and then consider buying or maybe renting a wholly optional road-trip car?

 

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that four’s a charm when it comes to this cycle of invention, and that the electric car in some form will take hold this time around. And with a front page article in this week’s Wall Street Journal article about Nikola Tesla becoming a much bigger geek hero than Thomas Edison, we’ll just have to come up with some Tesla-the-inventor jokes. “Nikola, come here. We need you.”