I made an alternate reality thread for cars. It's for what if scenarios for cars. Rules for making a what if scenario: 1. Start a post with what if (insert alternate reality here). 2. Post some pictures of cars. 3. Make a list of what things would be different in your alternate reality and in real life. There you have it, have fun posting what if scenarios.
What if Henry Ford and Herbert Austin had made their cars electric, leading to electric cars becoming the norm in the early 20th century? I would imagine the early cars from the 1920s would have a similar appearance to the Real electric cars from the time, such as the detroit electric, or baker electric cars. not the smaller, lower battery cover with a lack of any grille, and that there is a second equally sized battery cover in the rear of the car. just like how electric cars were a niche for city dwelling people in real life at this time, so would ICE cars be continued for use by some luxury car companies. by the 1930s, aviation would still have caught on, leading to streamlining being quite a trend. the difference here being again, no need for a central raised hood or radiator grille. the lack of such engine bay height would also likely lead to window sills being lowered along with the roof height seen on irl cars. of course, even if technology developed faster, electricity would not be enough to power all the aeroplanes tanks, and trucks used in WW2, meaning many of them would have combustion engines, similar to IRL. even if something like an electric jeep did exist, it would not look much different from the exterior, as keeping all the batteries in one place would facilitate using a large cubic "engine bay". as for the car designs of the late 40's, the general continuation of lower, wider, sleeker would continue mostly as normal. the 1950s of course was the nuclear and jet age of car styling, and again, due to limitations on industrial scales, aeroplanes would still likely adopt jet engines. the development of nuclear technology could mean heavy vehicles such as trucks or trains could be reasonably electrified from this point. the widespread adoption of independent suspension in the front of IRL cars at this time would also extend to the rear much more commonly, as fixed rear-mounted motors would be cheaper and give better packaging than a longitudinal motor in a central tunnel. it would also allow for dual motor setups, which could be this universe's equivalent to having a V8. By the 60's, there were a bunch of bored adrenaline junkies around from WW2, who would have started modifying these cars to go faster, and as prohibition in the US still would have happened, ex moonshine runners would have started nascar, meaning some form of muscle car wars would emerge in the 60's, putting more and more power into homologation specials. but instead of putting a huge engine in, you could simply put a slightly beefier electric motor in and turn up the power, so perhaps instead, power would very quickly get to an excessive amount, and some sort of regulation would be implemented to limit power output or range, then the engineers would turn towards making the cars more lightweight and handle better. when we get to the 70s however, car culture in the US takes an interesting turn, because without localised car emissions, (and the fact most electrical grids would be running nuclear anyway) the malaise era wouldn't happen, meaning America's muscle car scene would much more closely resemble australia's, with the muscle car era smoothly transitioning into the "tuner" era. I'll add more detail and pictures later, i just want to save what i've written so far.
