When carmakers taunted horses

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You know cars are faster than horses. But in the early days of automobiles, carmakers had to wage a fierce PR battle to win.

This marketing conflict from the early 1900s may show how a battle between self-driving cars and traditional cars could play out.

As we look ahead to a public conversation about the merits of self-driving cars over traditionally driven ones, the horse and car battle may prove to be prescient. New technologies aren't easily accepted — and sometimes even a superior product has to adopt fierce tactics to win.

And despite the car's shortcomings, the horse really did create a lot of problems that automobiles could fix. Horse manure was a serious public health hazard; thousands of horses were maltreated (and as many died); and, of course, horses had less acceleration and braking power than the car, resulting in slowdowns and accidents.

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"they even invented the horsepower to describe the power of a car's engine"
James Watt invented the horsepower to measure the strength of his improved steam engines! He did it using slightly dodgy numbers on their lifting capacity, so it's not exactly the power of a horse, but wow you got the source wrong on that one.

MSpacer

"America was never great" - Horse

Heroasaurus

"Horses, they're almost as bad as the Jews" Henry Ford.

Studeb

There is zero correlation between cars replacing horses & self driving vehicles replacing cars. It's the loss of autonomy that self drivers are bringing. No matter what "benefits" they may offer, they'll never replace the joyous freedom of driving yourself. Why can't technology improve our lives instead of trying to control them?

ginfub

At 1:07 you say "of course [automakers] invented the term horsepower."

Are you sure about that? Encyclopedia Britannica says it was "adopted by the Scottish engineer James Watt in the late 18th century, after experiments with strong dray horses"

andrewwarner

Coming from someone who bought a dashcam because I was sick of getting cutoff every single morning on my way to work and wanted evidence if I ever crashed, Im all for self-driving cars. The majority of people are terrible drivers. Texting, putting on makeup, staring at yourself in the mirror, old people going 10mph below the speed limit. Yea, lets switch.

Heritagepostfarms

I love the connection you made with self driving cars.
A fantastic example.

CeoLogJM

I really like the end part where the producer talks a little, it gives personality to the video.

boosiv

CGP Greys "Humans need not apply" comes to mind when watching this. Let's try remember the horse kindly as we are next

frozeneternity

Horsepower, a unit of power, was introduced by James Watt in the 18th century. Not by automakers as is claimed in this video.

James Watt's steam engines were used to pump water out of mines. Before his engines, people either used Newcomen engines or horse mills (similar to windmills. Horses were tied to a rotating vertical shaft and made to move in a circle around the shaft with a beam attaching it to the shaft) to pump water out of those mines. Watt used the term horsepower to market his engines to those miners who used horse mills.

A steam engine that was rated 5 HP could draw as much water out of a mine in an hour as five horses.

+Vox just pointing out something that might have slipped through your research.

sungod

Before this video started the advertisement was of a car pulling out a horse that was stuck in mud.

siddhantparekh

Cars came out 100 years ago as an environmental alternative to horses. Anyone who's seen what happens in a parade with even a few horses know what I mean.

Lines

The reason why I'm skeptical about self-driving cars is it would mean I couldn't go anywhere that wasn't already programmed into the car's map system. Additionally, I'd be trusting every aspect of my personal transportation to a private corporation. It's like DRM for a car. Additionally, it would probably require a monthly subscription fee to the company, in addition to gas.

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