In 1900, more than a quarter of American cars ran on electricity
Electric cars are often treated as a modern invention, yet in 1900 some 28 percent of cars on American roads were electric. The first car to break 100 kilometres an hour was battery powered, and London's first motorised cabs were electric too, nicknamed Hummingbirds for the peculiar hum they made.
The story begins with small models. The Hungarian priest Ányos Jedlik built an early electric motor and used it to drive a tiny car, and in the 1830s inventors in Scotland, the Netherlands and Vermont made crude electric carriages and model vehicles running on batteries that could not be recharged. That was the real limit, until Gaston Planté invented the lead-acid battery in 1859 and Camille Alphonse Faure greatly increased its capacity in 1881, making industrial production possible.
That same year Gustave Trouvé fitted a motor and rechargeable battery to an English tricycle and tested it on a Paris street on 19 April 1881, likely the first electric vehicle to carry a person with its own power source, although he could not patent it. Thomas Parker, who also helped electrify the London Underground, built an electric car in Wolverhampton in 1884. In America, William Morrison of Des Moines produced a six-passenger electric wagon in 1890 and 1891 that reached 23 kilometres an hour.
For a while electricity held the speed crown. On 29 April 1899 Camille Jenatzy's rocket-shaped Jamais Contente became the first car past 100 kilometres an hour, topping out at 105.88. Walter Bersey's electric cabs appeared in London in 1897, and in New York a company ran up to 62 electric hansom cabs. Studebaker entered the car business in 1902 with electric models, and President Woodrow Wilson toured Washington in a Milburn Light Electric.
High cost, low speed and short range soon left battery cars unable to match petrol for ordinary drivers. They survived in niches such as forklifts, ambulances and the British milk float, and for most of the twentieth century the UK used more electric road vehicles than any other country. Concern about emissions and better batteries revived interest, and cumulative sales of plug-in cars reached 10 million by the end of 2020.
Source: History of the electric vehicle
