EV history goes back a few hundred years. The electric battery has been around for about 2,000 years. The electric vehicle has been around for about 200 years. Due to slow improvements in battery technology, the range of many electric vehicles today is the same as 100 years ago. That is changing though.
We are witnessing history in the making with the EV. The US Congress has floated a bill that states a firm goal to promote EV development in all sectors. The bill has teeth, $10 Billion USD in program incentives. Go Feds! In another boost to EVs, the US Government will be paying for home EV chargers to be installed. The Federal subsidy will cover some 4,600 California-based Coulomb Technologies ChargePoint chargers.
In 1910, EVs sold more than gas powered cars. Although EVs may have had the market share at the turn of the century, they had a few technical and performance issues, and a few bad breaks.
Ironically, the early winning internal combustion engine (ICE) ended up using up vast amounts of fossil fuels while polluting the planet and perhaps paving the way for their replacements: Electric Vehicles. If ICE's didn't waste 2/3 of their fuel, they could have
kept going another 200years.
Today EVs are enjoying the biggest resurge since their inception. In this section you can see just what happened to the first wave of electric vehicles, and why.
If you are new to electric vehicles, you may want to check first the EV Basics page.
The History of the electric car outlines turn of the century status of electric vehicles. The next few pages, from the History of electric cars to Electric car history lists the pros and cons of electric cars vs internal combustion cars and why the internal combustion car triumphed over the EV at that time.
Electric car news is just what it reads, as are Electric car articles and Electric car forums. The last page in the section, All electric cars gives definitions relating to modern day electric vehicles.
If you are wondering where in the market electric vehicles might be headed, the future of the electric vehicle is covered beginning with EV Future 1.
