Limited driving ranges and long charge times have been stumbling blocks for EV’s to become popular, but new battery technology is changing what’s possible. At the same time, tougher climate regulations and a push away from petroleum by both federal and state governments are giving auto makers incentive to get creative.
It seems like a dream of the future, perhaps a distant one, where we can travel pollution free. But electric cars have actually been around for more than 175 years. The first one made sometime between 1832 and 1839 by a Scottish inventor. Once the batteries were spent, however, they couldn’t be recharged. It took until 1859 for a French physicist to invent the rechargeable lead-acid battery.
Electric cars were relatively popular in the beginning of automotive history, and a handful of companies in Europe and the States produced vehicles for the public.
In 1891 the first electric car hit American streets in Des Moines Iowa. Electric taxis took to the streets of New York City in 1897, and in 1899 Thomas Edison began a decade long quest to create a battery powerful enough for commercial automobiles. He eventually gave up and decided it wasn’t commercially feasible.
In 1900, 28% of the 4,192 cars in the US were electric powered, and made up one third of vehicles in NYC, Boston, and Chicago.
By 1920, however, drivers wanted to travel longer distances than the charge on their cars would allow. Electric vehicles lacked the power of the internal combustion engines being developed, and gas was cheap and abundant. The invention of the starter did away with hand cranks, and by 1935 electric cars were pretty much gone.
In the 1960’s a third of Americans were still interested in Electric cars, and congress considered legislation recommending the use of electric vehicles to reduce air pollution.
Changing environmental regulations intermittently supported development of Electric Vehicles or left them to compete head on with oil powered cars. The 1960’s and 70’s saw a few companies produce cars and delivery trucks, although most of those companies went out of business within the next few years.
Today. Electric vehicles are coming back on the road, as pure plug-in electric’s or as hybrid cars, pairing an electric motor with a back up gas engine. Asia, Europe and even Detroit are all catching on. The question is will this wave of fascination with the EV last, or will new bio and synthetic fuels keep the combustion engine powering our transportation?
