When electric cars were for women

I never got any excitement from driving an electric car, with the exception of the 0-60 of the powerful ones.

But they are the smoothest commuters I have ever driven. Linear acceleration, super snappy for when you want to overtake, you never need a gas-station if have a garage.

I would take an electric over the camrys and crv’s any day.

Sounds like an example of that consumer preferences thing that I've heard called the "pink tax".

Had me spooked for a sec with a title like that until I reread it.

Quieter cars that don't smell bad are definitely an improvement especially for noise pollution, but car companies didn't care at the time as they tried to make them a necessity in American life.

Also I never got the appeal of ridiculously loud cars especially ones that just end up sounding like a bad time on the toilet.

I don't know about fully electric, but I can reliably guess the driver of every 2012 Prius with a smashed tail light I see on the road.

Gross, we had a version of this 15 years ago from Ars (0 upvotes) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3855928

The anecdote about Edison setting the electric car business back by overselling a defective battery solution is interesting. I still think the $2,000 electric car is a hard sell against a $850 Model-T unfortunately. I also thought it was amusing to call a steering wheel "un-ladylike" compared to a tiller arrangement. I think that's more just early vehicles not standardizing on controls and in this case the maker guessed wrong, but they were hardly alone. The late 19th/early 20th century vehicles were full of wacky and confusing control systems.

I had the pleasure of riding around once in a Detroit Electric. To call it a tea parlor on wheels would have been an understatement. It came equipped with a flower vase, and instead of a steering wheel (how unladylike!) it came with a tiller that would sit across your lap.

These were cars for very wealthy elite women. But just as big of a deal as it was for women to drive - these cars in particular did not require a servant to start, operate, or service.

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40 years from now: "When black F150s and Dodge Rams were for children"

They still are I think. If I had to guess what women want in a car, it's probably something easy to maintain, quiet.

I think what's unappealing to women about EVs is the unreliability with respect to range and charging availability. I struggled with my mom to charge an EV she rented for an inter-city trip and she swore off EVs for a while.

Slate truck is a good example, I saw that ad where it is like decal'd for a flower shop for example. It's pretty small and cute (I suppose electric cars are easier to customize aestheticially in terms of shape as long as you stick to the skateboard format), and the fact that it is quite different-looking than most trucks left some wondering who it's for. Mostly women I think.

Whereas men buy more trucks, and usually there is sort of a power aspect to it where they want something that feels and sounds powerful (and being a gas car is part of that), so they can race it or can pull a toy hauler or something. Women want more of a commuter, but not like a sedan, usually something more bulky like an SUV that makes them feel safe. And then like bachelors and gay guys want like a 2D coupe or a roadster or something.

But it is interesting how these niches influence the market.

It's like most of the money in every market these days is made by cornering the market a certain lifestyle and increasing markup rather than trying to produce some ultra-efficient everyman vehicle. The innovation is all in advertising and consumer control, that's how I feel about every market these days.

If GE cemented the electric car as a must-have for women of the time, then we would have seen advances battery tech and EVs decades earlier. It would eventually have become mainstream with men as well (think of how the wristwatch was originially seen as a women's accessory, back when men had pocketwatches). The real innovation is in controlling consumer sentiment.