The History of the Electric Car

 Most people that have heard of electric cars know about them within the context of the modern day where electrification is being looked to as a possible solution for the current energy crisis that is coming from diminishing supplies of fossil fuels (most notably petroleum and the refined gasoline that comes from it).

 People that are really knowledgeable about electric vehicles might understand that the history of electric vehicles goes back a lot further than this decade.  Many might even be aware of the interest in electric vehicles that was around in the 1980s and 1990s in the wake of the oil shocks that took place in the 1970s.  This is considered a knowledgeable person these days, but the fact of the matter is that the history of the electric vehicle goes back a lot longer than that.  Electric vehicles have actually been around longer than gasoline vehicles, it is just a part of history that isn’t generally known.

 The three stages of electric vehicle history

 The history of the electric car is essentially best understood in three stages.  You can look at these stages as being part of the rise, fall and eventual rise of this particular idea although the rest of this article will show that the reality of what has taken place is a lot more complicated than that simple model would illustrate.

 During the first stage of development, electric cars were thought to be the way of the future.  It is the only time during which they were able to dominate the market of automobiles in recorded history and people frowned on gasoline engines while at the same time extolling the virtues that came from automobiles that were able to run on the power provided by various means of electricity generation.

 The second stage of development is the stage of automobile development and construction that everyone is familiar with.  This is the stage of development that saw the decline of the dominance of electricity and the rise of the internal combustion engine.  For more than a century, combustion engines have dominated the course of automobile history and even now they continue to be the major player in shaping how this particular field of the economy works.

 The second stage of automobile development is really intertwined with the third stage and that is the stage that is currently going on.  It started in about 1980 with an increase in interest about electric vehicles and it has continued through to the modern era.  In fact, this stage can also be divided into three sub-stages involving the increase, decrease and then additional increase of electricity interest over the course of the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s.  This all represents the collective history of the automobile and it is that history that has brought us to the present day.  As we begin to examine the history of the electric vehicle, we will take a few detours to highlight some of the most important individual accomplishments that were made over the course of the 180-year history of the electric vehicle.

 Who invented the electric car?

 People are generally aware of the names of people associated with the invention and production of the modern combustion automobile.  People like Benz and Ford are credited with the development of the internal combustion engine and the subsequent creation of mass production assembly lines that allowed prices for such vehicles to drop dramatically.  While that does play a part in the history of the electric vehicle, answering the question that forms the basis of this section is in truth a lot harder to do for the simple reason that the history of the electric vehicle is actually a lot older.

 To truly figure out who invented the electric vehicle, you need to go all the way back to around 1830 as this is when electric automobiles first started being looked at as a means for locomotion to areas previously thought to be outside of the range of a normal human being.

 In 1828, a man from Hungary named Anyos Jedlik created the first electric motor.  This motor cannot truly be the start date of the invention of the electric car, but it is notable because of the fact that the motor was able to power a small toy car that Jedlik used for the demonstration.  The motor itself was tiny and could by no means actually power a car even if the Hungarian decided to use it in that manner, but the motor was truly little more than an exercise in scientific curiosity and represents one of the building blocks leading towards the eventual invention of the electric vehicle.

 The next advance towards the invention of the electric vehicle was likely the 1834 introduction of a better electric motor by Thomas Davenport, an American engineer.  This electrical motor ran on direct current, a form of electricity that precedes its counterpart alternating current by a significant number of years.  The motor was once again used within a toy car which was then placed on a track that had electricity running through it.  In this way, the motor was really more for the purposes of a toy car on a track along the lines of what a child might use today, but these small electric motors first developed by Jedlik and then Davenport represent the first two forays into legitimate electric motor technology.

 The year 1835 say the Dutch enter this field with Sibrandus Stratingh creating a small electric car that could be powered by a battery that was not rechargeable.  Three years later in 1838 a Scottish inventor named Robert Davidson was responsible for the creation of a train locomotive that had the ability to travel approximately four miles per hour on a track.  By the end of the decade, crude and not particularly effective versions of both an electric horse-drawn carriage and an electric train had been created and the technology was beginning to look promising.

 It was really the development of serious battery technology in 1865 that started the electric vehicle on its way.  Gaston Plante, a Frenchman, was responsible for the creation of the first lead-acid battery, a type of battery that is still used in electric cars today.  His countryman Camille Faure improved on the idea, making a better version of the battery that would eventually be used in the creation of the first electric cars that were made for public consumption towards the end of the century.

 What does all of this tell us?  It tells us that there is no one person that can really be credited with the creation of the electric vehicle.  There were many people working on the problem from many angles all over the world.  Development of the electric vehicle was truly an international endeavour, perhaps the first collaborative private and public international project in recorded history.  While a specific inventor of the electric vehicle cannot really be determined, it is easy to point to the first commercial electric vehicle ever created.

 The Baker Motor Vehicle Company

 The Baker Motor Vehicle is probably the first commercial automobile to ever be sold.  It was sold within the United States market almost exclusively and for the most part it was a car that was solid given the technology of the time period.  There were many different models that were sold and the car did receive upgrades over the course of its sales period, but for the most part it was a sturdy automobile powered by lead-acid batteries that allowed people that had the money to be able to get around.

 It started selling in 1899 and continued selling through to 1915.  It had a top speed of around 15 miles per hour and at the time sold for a very hefty $2300.  It could go approximately 50 miles on a specific charge and had two seats in the cabin of the car.

When the car first came onto the market however, it was originally a lot cheaper.  The first car retailed at $850, allowing many more people to purchase one, including famous inventor Thomas Edison.  Edison was also responsible for designing nickel-iron batteries that would eventually be used in some of the later versions of the car, but these batteries were not used in all of the different cars that were sold.

 Overall, Baker was a company that pretty much only created electric vehicles and while that made them one of the early dominant presences within the automobile market, history has shown that Baker was not able to move fast enough when the big market shift occurred and therefore they eventually had to give way to other companies.  The company based in Cleveland, Ohio, ended up going bankrupt in 1914 and the last Baker electric vehicle was sold less than a year later.