McKinsey Quarterly 2023 Number 1

Taking a product perspective Francis and Freelan built the Stanley Steamer with product details in mind. They weren’t amateurs. The Stanleys had already made a fortune from patenting the airbrush and made even more money from developing dry-plate photographic technology, which they sold to George Eastman, who built the Eastman Kodak Company. The Stanleys designed their 1897 automobile with railroad precision: a minimum of parts, so it wouldn’t readily break down; a minimum of noise, so driver and passenger could easily have an intelligible conversation; and a sturdy steam boiler. In 1899, Freelan and his wife, Flora, drove their steam-powered car to the peak of Mount Washington, the highest elevation in the northeastern United States, in one-third of the time it would take a horse and carriage to make the same trip. In 1898 and 1899, the Stanleys’ motorcar company outsold every other US automaker. In 1906, a racing version of the Stanley Steamer broke the world record for the fastest recorded speed in an automobile—127.7 miles per hour—a mark that no car would surpass for more than five years .

Drivers needed to stop for water tank top offs to keep their car kettles boiling.

From a product standpoint, the Stanley Steamer had other advantages, as well. To start (quite literally), ICE vehicles wouldn’t engage unless they were first cranked up with a cumbersome, external turning bar that had to be inserted into the car’s front, a process that required not only physical strength but a bit of luck that the crank wouldn’t jerk back and break the turner’s thumb, hand, or arm. ICE vehicles also required the technical chops to know the vehicle’s correct timing at ignition, in degrees from top dead center. Today, only those with expertise in general automotive knowledge would know that. But

at the turn of the century, every ICE driver had to know ignition timing. Not so for the Stanley Steamer: steam vehicles didn’t need a crank. They did, though, need to be warmed up first for about 20 minutes, sometimes more, particularly on cold days, to build their head of steam. Electric vehicles also didn’t need a crank; they started immediately. In fact, electric cars enjoyed something of a miniboom at the turn of the 20th century. Electric taxis operated in several cities, including London and New York City. When President William McKinley was fatally shot in 1901, he was rushed to a Buffalo, New York, hospital in an electric-powered ambulance. (It was his second trip in an automobile; his first was in a Stanley Steamer.) Yet while electric cars worked for short jaunts—or tragic rushes—they were critically challenged by their limited range: their batteries needed to be recharged. Steam cars, which could be powered by a variety of fuels—from coal and charcoal to kerosene and wood—had an uneven range, at least from the driver’s perspective. One steam car reached 1,500 miles on a single load of fuel. Practically speaking, however, steam automobile range was restricted by the requirement to keep adding more water. Drivers needed to stop for water tank top offs to keep their car kettles boiling. A car, after all, is constrained by its ecosystem.

McKinsey Quarterly 2023 Number 1

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