4 Replies to “Electric Cars (Greg Flynn)”

  1. You do a good job of explaining why electric cars did not take off around the same time as internal combustion cars. The slidecast made it clear that the development of internal combustion cars before electric cars was not inevitable. Your pictures do a great job of emphasizing all of your points as well. You do a good job of explaining how the car industry affected the progress of electric cars. I also like how you explain that the technology is not just the car itself. It’s a system that must include charging stations to continue. If I had to add some critiques, I would say that it might be nice to include more societal values that affected the cars. The distinction between the quirky cars and more “normal” electric cars and societies reaction to this switch was good, however. Additionally, you did a great job of avoiding a determinist perspective, but it could be nice to connect the technology to some of the other overarching class themes. Overall, you did a great job of putting this technology into its historical context. I learned a lot!

  2. The model 3! Yes! Just using that at the beginning definitely got me interesting. The story you tell about Ford is well explained. It made me wonder what the future would look like if Ford has used electrical cars. The story about GM and the car is a bit shocking. Again, it just goes to show how society defines the way it looks at technology and progress. The story line you tell us about the GM cars is well told. There are reasons why the patrons wouldn’t let anyone just use the cars. Musk understands, from what you’ve told us, that cars are also a system. It’s not just a car- it’s a series of values and systemic constructions. There are a lot of things we can say about the Musk’s mega factory. I find it very shocking. It might have helped to create a graph that would look at the rise of electrical cars vs gasoline based cars.

  3. Overall I really enjoyed your slidecast. I liked how you started with the picture of the Tesla car because it grabbed my attention right away. I liked how you then explained the history of the electric car, and how the economic context caused it to not be adopted at first. You did a great job explaining all the contexts that affected the development of the electric car throughout history. Particularly, how the motor vehicle industry and the competition between companies forced the development of electric cars to become something more desirable for the public. I liked how you described the appearance of the car and how it was influenced by society, which was something I didn’t really think about until now. I think something you could’ve added to the slidecast would be an environmental context. For example when the oil crisis occurred or when climate change started to become better understood, was there an increase in the development of electric cars. My only criticism is the analogy you made to cell phone use was not explained very well. I think transitions into and out of that slide could have been better. Overall the pacing, organization, and content of the slidecast were great.

  4. Greg:

    Great job on the slidecast. I really liked how well you set up the historical context for the electric car. The story about GM’s first electric car was very interesting. I had never heard about how they destroyed the entire first batch. Connecting that to their fears over lost revenue helps to set up the context and explains why it took so long for electric cars to become mainstream again. I also thought it was a good decision to talk about the importance of the aesthetic appeal in selling the cars. Without mass appeal, they cannot be successful. My only criticism is that there was not enough time spent discussing social issues. Bring up concerns over climate change and dwindling natural resources would have helped to better explain the context and the return of electric cars to the mainstream. Other than that this was an excellent slidecast, good work!

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