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38 Build Your Own Electric Vehicleareas assured victory for internal combustion engine vehicles. Ironically, it was anelectric vehicle’s motor and battery, adapted as an electric starter for internal combustionengine vehicles by Charles Kettering in 1912, that delivered the crushing coup de graceto early electric autos.Ashes to Ashes, Dust to DustThe story of the internal combustion vehicle is inextricably linked to the story of oilitself, but the internal combustion engine’s rise in popularity was due more to the greateconomic advantage of oil rather than any technical advantage of the internal combustionengine. Today, with the United States and other industrialized nations substantiallydependent on foreign oil, the strategic economic disadvantage of oil coupled with theenvironmental disadvantage of the internal combustion engine has created strongarguments for alternative solutions. Let’s examine how this situation was created.Animal oils had been used for centuries to provide illumination. Rock oils (so calledto indicate that they derived directly from the ground, and the original name for crudeoil or petroleum) were envisioned in the 1850s only as superior alternatives forillumination and lubrication in the upcoming mechanical age. Earlier researchers haddiscovered that a quality illuminating oil, kerosene, could be extracted from coal orrock oil. Coal existed in plentiful quantities. All that remained was to discover asubstantial source of crude oil/petroleum.The discovery of oil in Western Pennsylvania by Edwin Drake in 1859 was the sparkthat ignited the oil revolution. Almost overnight, the boom in Pennsylvania oil, with itsbyproducts exported globally, became vitally important to the United States economy.The promise of fabulous wealth provided the impetus that attracted the best businessminds of the age to the quest. Soon the oil business, dominated by kerosene, was controlledby the worldwide monopolies of John Rockefeller’s Standard Oil (production/distributionfrom Pennsylvania in the United States), Ludwig and Robert Nobel (production fromBaku on the Russian Caspian Sea), Alphonse and Edmond Rothschild (productionfrom Baku, distribution from Batum on the Russian Black Sea), Shell (production andtanker distribution from Batum/Bomeo to England and the Far East), and Royal Dutch(production from northeast Sumatra in Indonesia).These monopolies, securely in place before the 1900s, were all based on the marketsfor oil as kerosene and lubricating products. In the 1890s, gasoline, once thrown awayafter kerosene was obtained, was lucky to bring two cents a gallon, but that was aboutto change.Coal was the foundation for the industrial revolution, and the first internalcombustion engine built in 1860 by Etienne Lenoir was fired by coal gas. Nikolaus Ottoimproved on the design with a four-cycle approach in 1876. But the discovery thatgasoline was an even more “combustible” fuel that was also inexpensive, plentiful, andpowerful was the spark that ignited the internal combustion engine revolution. All thatremained was controlling the explosive gasoline-air mixture—solved by GottliebDaimler’s carburetor design of 1885—and controlling the timing—solved by KarlBenz’s enhanced battery-spark coil-spark plug ignition design of 1885—for the internalcombustion engine as we know it today to emerge.Early internal combustion vehicles were noisy, difficult to learn to drive, difficult tostart, and prone to explosions (backfiring) that categorized them as dangerous incompeting steam and electric advertisements. Internal combustion vehicle offeringsfrom Daimler (Germany, 1886), Benz (Germany, 1888), Duryea (United States, 1893),