McKnight ended up at 3M by mistake. The company had turned him down for a laborer's job in , and when it wanted to hire him as a bookkeeper a year later, he had already decided to accept a position elsewhere. But upon hearing that his mother was ill, he refused the job offer and prepared to go home--only to learn that his mother had recovered.
The only option left was 3M. It turned out to be the best mistake that ever happened to the company. The birth of 3M sounds like the beginning of a bad joke: A lawyer, a doctor, two railroad execs, and a meat market owner form a company in in Two Harbors, Minn. But "like so many others who organized mining ventures in the early s," wrote Virginia Huck in Brand of the Tartan--The 3M Story , "the founders of 3M apparently incorporated first and investigated later.
Instead of a prized mineral, it was a soft rock and an inferior abrasive. According to Huck, "By the end of , 3M stock had dropped to the all-time low on the barroom exchange--two shares for a shot, and cheap whiskey at that. The founders shifted gears, entering the abrasives business directly by making their own sandpaper, even though their corundum was virtually worthless as an abrasive.
Into this comedy of errors came a shy, red-haired year-old, William McKnight, as an assistant bookkeeper. No one who saw the quiet, serious boy apply for the job could have possibly predicted that in a very short time he would become the major influence in the success of 3M. McKnight was soft-spoken but also direct and efficient. As sales manager in , he established the policy of going into the backroom with a client's workmen--where he could demonstrate 3M products and learn their concerns--instead of just dropping off a catalog in the front office with a purchasing agent.
In doing so, he realized that 3M's sandpaper was inconsistent at best, inferior at worst. To increase quality control, he believed the company needed someone to facilitate communications between sales and production. Upper management agreed, and thinking McKnight perfect for the job, named him general manager in His tenure started--naturally--with a mistake. It turned out that several casks of olive oil had spilled onto a shipment of 3M abrasives in transit, and the oil-tainted "sand" failed to retain its adhesion to the backing paper.
And no one had noticed the problem. After that debacle McKnight established a research lab to test materials at every stage of production. It was a crude, closet-sized affair--"I had to back out when Mr. McKnight wanted to come in," recalled William Vievering, the first lab employee--but an important first step. McKnight's move to center the business on research ended up having the dual effect of not only testing ideas but also generating them. He set the tone with his philosophy of "Listen to anybody with an idea.
A Philadelphia inventor named Francis Okie had sent the note, and he wanted to develop his invention of waterproof sandpaper. McKnight realized that Okie's idea would rapidly be accepted because it produced less friction than dry sandpaper and didn't generate hazardous dust when used wet.
The Year 1992 From The People History
He bought the rights to the idea and hired Okie, and by , 3M had released Wetordry sandpaper, its first breakthrough product. As Richard Carlton, 3M's director of manufacturing and author of its first testing manual, wrote, "Every idea should have a chance to prove its worth, and this is true for two reasons: Carlton's philosophy that "You can't stumble if you're not in motion" encapsulates how 3M started making adhesives and became a diversified company.
The painter had been having trouble masking one section of a two-tone car popular in those days while painting the other. Most tapes at the time were unfit for the task because they left a residue or reacted with the paint. Drew assured the painter that his company could solve the problem, an interesting boast considering 3M made abrasives exclusively at the time.
Account Options
Drew toiled on the problem for two years. At one point McKnight, by now vice president, wrote him a memo saying, "I think it would be better if you returned to your job of helping Mr. In an August edition of The New Yorker, GM vice-chairman Bob Lutz was quoted as saying, " All the geniuses here at General Motors kept saying lithium-ion technology is 10 years away, and Toyota agreed with us — and boom, along comes Tesla.
So I said, 'How come some tiny little California startup, run by guys who know nothing about the car business, can do this, and we can't? The Nissan Leaf , introduced in Japan and the United States in December , became the first modern all-electric, zero tailpipe emission five door family hatchback to be produced for the mass market from a major manufacturer.
The Better Place network was the first modern commercial deployment of the battery swapping model. The Renault Fluence Z. The battery exchange process took five minutes. Less than 1, Fluence Z.
What’s the most generous country on earth?
The record was officially registered by Guinness World Records. Several months later, the Nissan Leaf overtook the i MiEV as the best selling all-electric car ever, [97] and by February global sales of the Leaf reached the 50, unit mark. Toyota eQ in Japan in The car production is limited to units. Toyota announced that 90 out of the vehicles produced globally will be placed in carsharing demonstration projects in the United States and the rest in Japan. The Coda sedan went out of production in , after selling only about units in California. Its manufacturer, Coda Automotive , filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on 1 May The company stated that it expects to emerge from the bankruptcy process to focus on energy storage solutions as it has decided to abandon car manufacturing.
The Tesla Model S ranked as the top selling plug-in electric car in North America during the first quarter of with 4, cars sold, ahead of the Nissan Leaf 3, This time was the Nissan Leaf with units sold, representing a 5. The Renault—Nissan Alliance reached global sales of , all-electric vehicles in July The ,th car was delivered to a British customer.
Accounting for plug-in hybrids, the Leaf and the Model S also ranked first and second correspondinly among the world's top 10 selling plug-in electric cars. By early June , the Renault—Nissan Alliance continued as the leading all-electric vehicle manufacturer with global sales of over , pure electric vehicles representing about half of the global light-duty all-electric market segment. Nissan sales totaled , units, which includes the Nissan Leaf and the e-NV van.
Good News -- I Failed, a Story of Inventing in Minnesota - D. P. Cornelius - Google Книги
Renault has sold 65, electric vehicles, and its line-up includes the ZOE passenger car, the Kangoo Z. The Tesla Model S , with global deliveries of more than , units, is the world's second best selling all-electric car of all-time. The Tesla Model 3 was unveiled on 31 March Before the unveiling event, over , people had reserved the Model 3. The Hyundai Ioniq Electric was released in South Korea in July , and sold over 1, units during its first two months in the market. The Norwegian electric-drive segment achieved a combined market share of In February Consumer Reports named Tesla as the top car brand in the United States and ranked it 8th among global carmakers.
In September , the Norwegian market share of all-electric cars reached Accounting for conventional hybrids, the electrified segment achieved an all-time record The principal manufacturer of e-bikes globally is China, with seeing the manufacturer of In the world Geoby is the leading manufacturers of E-bikes.
- CANCELLED BY BLOOD.
- How 3M Gave Everyone Days Off and Created an Innovation Dynamo.
- La balada de los suicidas (Spanish Edition)!
- Great Dog Stories: Heartwarming Tales of Remarkable Dogs (Amazing Stories (Heritage House))!
Pedego is the best selling in the U. In China the number of electric bicycles on the road was million in It retains capacity of nearly 6 million electric bicycles a year. In , Charger Electric Bicycle was the first U. Selected list of battery electric vehicles include in chronological order: From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
This article is about history of all-electric vehicles. For the history of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, hybrid electric vehicles that use plug-in rechargeable batteries, see history of plug-in hybrids. Modern mass market all-electric passenger cars.
Clockwise from upper left: Electric car use by country , list of modern production plug-in electric vehicles , and list of production battery electric vehicles. The Origins of Electrotechnologies: Biographical dictionary of the history of technology.
- History of the electric vehicle;
- What Am I Living For.
- What Events Happened in 1992.
- I Did It.
National High Magnetic Field Laboratory. Retrieved 14 December TravelSmart Teacher Resource Kit. Deutsche Autos — First edition , p. The Electric Vehicle and the Burden of History. New Brunswick , New Jersey , and London: Retrieved 13 July Archived from the original on Council of Industrial Design California Institute of Technology. Archived from the original PDF on The Wall Street Journal. The Tesla Roadster becomes the first production electric vehicle to use lithium-ion battery cells as well as the first production electric vehicle to have a range of over miles on a single charge.
Securities and Exchange Commission. Archived from the original on 16 May Retrieved 25 February As of December 31, , we had delivered approximately 2, Tesla Roadsters to customers in over 30 countries. The New York Times.
History of Polaroid and Edwin Land
There's Just One Catch San Jose Mercury News. Lanzado oficialmente en Chile" in Spanish. University of California, Irvine. Volt and Leaf sales correspond to the U. Tesla Model S in pole position! Best Selling Cars Blog. Nissan Leaf new leader! BMW Group Press release. Renault Media Press release. Automotive World Press release. The Los Angeles Times. About , battery electric cars and light-duty vans have been sold worldwide by May Includes passenger and light utility variants. See also detailed sales and cumulative global sales in the two graphs.
Cumulative global sales totaled about 1,, highway legal plug-in electric passenger cars and light-duty vehicles by mid-September Registrations through December since Registrations through June since Revised figures for Cumulative plug-in hybrid and all-electric sales in Europe totaled , units as of December A total of 77, plug-in electric cars were sold in Europe during the first half of , consisting of 40, all-electric cars and 36, plug-in hybrids. Accounting for global cumulative sales by December , plug-in electric car sales are led by the Nissan Leaf , , followed by the Tesla Model S , A total of 31, units were sold worldwide in Global cumulative sales since June totaled 56, Model S cars by the end of Model 3 Orders Surpassed , Within 24 Hours".
The milestone was achieved in August The Alliance also set an industry record of , EVs sold in a single year. These are the only plug-in electric cars so far with over , global sales. A total of 5, plug-in electric vehicles were registered in Norway in January , consisting of: Sales of new plug-in hybrids achieved a market share of The market share of all-electric cars reached These included the Stanhope, Victoria, and Surrey. A four-passenger model was introduced in