The Early Automobile: Internal Combustion verses Steam and Electric Power

Lenoir Engine, 1861

Drawing of 1885 Benz engine, showing similarity in general appearance to Duryea engine. From Karl Benz und sein Lebenswerk, Stuttgart, 1953.

Compact Power:  The Internal Combustion Engine (ICE)

            Along with the development of the bicycle, the internal combustion engine was most critical to developments in early automobile history. Credit for the ICE is normally given to Belgian inventor Etienne Lenoir (1822-1900). Living in France, Lenoir patented a two-stroke engine in 1860 that used illuminating gas (gas derived from heating coal in large retorts) that was ignited by a spark generated by a battery and coil. Lenoir’s engine was noisy and inefficient, and it tended to overheat. Used in stationary applications to power pumps and machines, some 250 were sold by 1865. And while the editor of Scientific American proclaimed in 1860 that with the coming of the Lenoir engine the Age of Steam was coming to an end, it took more than four decades before the ICE would eclipse the steam engine.¹⁶

            In 1876, Nicholas Otto (1832-1891) developed a four-cycle engine (intake, compression, power, and exhaust), and Lenoir came up with a similar design during 1883 and 1884. Two engineers who had once worked for Otto, Gottleib Daimler (1834-1900) and Wilhelm Maybach (1846-1929), designed a 1.5 horsepower, 110 pound, 600 rpm “high speed engine” in 1885, and built several experimental vehicles between 1885 and 1889. Maybach, one of the most important engineer-inventors of this early period, designed the modern carburetor for mixing air and gasoline in 1893.¹⁷

            In the meantime, Karl Benz (1844-1929) built a tricycle in 1885 to 1886 and exhibited a design at the 1889 Paris Exhibition. By 1893 he had constructed an improved four-wheel car with a three-horsepower engine that sold well and was fairly reliable. More than 100 Benz vehicles were sold by 1898. An early leader, Benz was soon passed technologically, especially by French manufacturers.

            James Laux, in his book First Gear, characterizes in detail the French automobile industry before 1914.¹⁸ The key French inventor-engineer of the late nineteenth century was Emile Constant Levassor, who took Gottleib Daimler’s engine and placed it in the front of the vehicle. Before Levassor’s untimely death, he proved the merits of his design – that a vehicle of his design could be practical – in the 1895 Paris-Bordeaux-Paris race. At first, and for only a relatively short time, Paris was the center of the nascent global automobile industry. Perhaps this was due to excellent French roads or social, economic, or political factors that remain to be explicated and are currently discounted. James Flink has argued that the importance of Paris was accidental rather than a crystallization of a complex network of relationships that included German, French, and Belgian inventors and businessmen.¹⁹

            The importance of the early French auto industry is reflected in the following chart²⁰:

Year	Total Vehicles in Use
1899	1,672
1900	2,897
1901	5,386
1902	9,207
1903	12,984
1904	17,107
1905	21,543
1906	26,262
1907	31,286
1908	37,586
1908	46,000

            While a number of entrepreneurs in England, America, and Germany were only beginning to catch up to the French by the end of the nineteenth century, there was a concurrent Darwinian-like competition among three rival technologies in terms of power–the ICE already mentioned, steam, and electricity. In the end the most economically efficient technology would prevail, but that was by no means clear to those living in 1900.

Choices Made:  Competition from Steam Engines and Electric Motors

            The early designs of the internal combustion engine were primitive to say the least, and thus these power plants were anything but reliable and smooth running. At the turn of the century steam cars dominated the automotive field. An alternative was the electric car; but they were expensive and limited in range and speed. As it turned out, there was a short window of time in which these three technological rivals were engaged in a contest that revolved around which would be the chief power source for this new form of flexible and personal transportation, the automobile. The end result would have enormous consequences for the remainder of the twentieth century, economically and environmentally. As Tom McCarthy has pointed out, during the first decade of the twentieth century, a number of experts warned of the environmental consequences of ICE-powered vehicles, including the issues of oil depletion and toxic exhausts. However, McCarthy contends that the widespread adoption of the automobile by a consuming public allayed concerns at a time when adjustments could have been far more easily made than those that we, in the early twenty-first century, are now making.²¹

            Steam had a long history going back to the eighteenth century as the chief power source for factories, railroad locomotives, and electrical generation. For automobiles, steam engines were quieter than internal combustion. With fewer moving parts, steam engines had been manufactured for generations, and with less exacting tolerances. In addition, a steam engine had remarkable torque, especially from a dead stop. Steam pressure could be built up and stored, to be released at full force on demand. An internal combustion engine must turn within a narrow range of revolutions per minute to operate efficiently. Additionally, as anyone who has looked at a schematic of a transmission or differential knows, gears and small parts result in a power transmission system that can only be deemed ingenious to the mechanically uninitiated. Moreover, in the cylinder of a gas engine, the greatest force is exerted at the explosive instant of ignition, with the power dissipating as the piston completes its stroke. But in the cylinder of a steam engine, the steam enters, expands and continues to push for as much as 90 percent of the stroke.

            Steam engines had both limitations and advantages.²² With its extensive piping and metalwork, a steam car was heavier than an ICE car of comparable horsepower. Steam engines ran at lower thermal efficiencies than gas engines, losing much of their heat to the atmosphere. And while the working parts of a steam engine were quite simple and durable, the ancillary equipment – boiler, burner, and all manner of pumps, valves, and gauges – were dauntingly complex, demanding constant attention and maintenance. Most critically, the popular steam cars of the early 1900s – Stanley, White, and Locomobile – took 10 to 30 minutes to work up adequate steam pressure from a cold start and then had to stop for water every 30 to 100 miles. ICE-powered cars started faster and had greater range, an advantage in rural areas where service stations were sparse.

            After the turn of the century, steam car technology remained essentially stagnant for years until Abner Doble introduced advanced designs, while ICE-powered cars quickly improved. By the end of the first decade of the twentieth century, steam cars were technologically obsolete and economically unviable. Given these winds of change, White and Locomobile both converted to internal combustion by 1910, leaving only Stanley to fill a market with a curiosity that in recent times has been resurrected in as an interest in “buff” circles by car collector and comedian Jay Leno.

            In addition to the ICE- and steam-driven automobiles, there were also electric models at the turn of the century, partly the consequence of work by Thomas Edison and others related to improved battery designs.²³ Electrics had several distinct advantages. They were especially attractive to those in the taxi business and women who wished to avoid the crank starting, noise, vibration, and pollution of ICE-powered vehicles. Low-end torque characteristics of electric motors ensured quick starts. However, in the early twentieth century any advantages were greatly outweighed by the many serious liabilities. Electrics were far more expensive than the gasoline automobile to manufacture and about three times more expensive to operate. Batteries could weigh a ton or more. There was the ever-present wire or cord that had to connect to a discharged electric car. As late as 1910, their range was only 50 to 80 miles on a battery charge, charging facilities were virtually nonexistent outside large cities, the storage batteries of the day deteriorated rapidly, and its hill climbing ability was poor due to excessive weight of the batteries for the horsepower generated.²⁴ These relative liabilities have persisted to the present, despite recent improvement in storage batteries.