Comment Re:Mercedes, BMW engineers are dimwits. (Score 2) 360
They saw diesel electric locomotives replace steam engines in just one decade in 1950s.
The reason was different. Diesels cost about 3x as much as steam locomotives pre-WWII. But by the 1950s, diesel engine manufacturing was a production line process and the price had come down.
The real advantage of diesel over steam was that steam locomotives are incredible maintenance-intensive. Here's daily maintenance. That's what had to be done every day, by a whole crew. That's just daily. Here's 120,000 mile maintenance, done about once a year for a road locomotive. This isn't an oil change; this is a full teardown, boiler replacement, and rebuild.
Electric cars don't have that big an edge over IC engines at this point.