Cities, cars and oil

The history of the automobile is marked by roads not taken and roads abandoned. Even before 1840 Scottish businessman Robert Anderson invented the battery-electric car. By 1900, 38% of American cars were ^electric1 - a history of the automobile that is completely forgotten today. Therefore, paradoxically, what appears to be the future of cars in a time of global warming - so-called EVs - is in fact their past - one of the many contradictions that characterize the rise of these means of transport to the hegemonic status they have today. Cars fundamentally structure public transport, the way cities are organized and the cultural imaginary we have. We are living in a society - globally, not just in Romania - in which the car is central, and with it the ideologies it represents.

Dawn of bourgeois modernity

Two pressures led to the emergence of the motor car in the second half of the 19th century in Western Europe and the USA, societies undergoing a