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Are Electric Cars the Answer to High Gas Prices?

With no end in sight for rising gas prices, alternative-fuel vehicles seem like the smart choice for savvy consumers and car makers. There is a buzz surrounding electric cars, with top and startup automakers working to introduce new models, but surprisingly electric vehicles are not a new innovation.

In this edition of Smith Business Close-Up with the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, Dr. David A. Kirsch discusses the electric car’s century-old history, its future, and lessons learned from the past that could add up to success this time around.

Kirsch is associate professor of management and entrepreneurship at the Smith School. His research interests include industry emergence, technological choice, technological failure and the role of entrepreneurship in the emergence of new industries. His book, The Electric Vehicle and the Burden of History (Rutgers University Press, 2000), examined the history of the electric vehicle in the U.S. in the early 20th century and the implications of that history for contemporary transportation policy. His work on the early history of the automobile industry has also been published in Business History Review and Technology and Culture. In 2003, his co-authored article on the Electric Vehicle Company received the IEEE Life Members Prize from the Society for the History of Technology.