What do you imagine when you think of a first car? Maybe a vehicle made up of branches with stone wheels, propelled by Fred Flintstone’s feet! Or is it a quirky little buggy with thin oversized tires driven by a man in a top hat!
You may be surprised to find electric vehicles aren’t a new concept. The first automobile ran on steam and electricity. You may also be surprised to know the first vehicles were developed in the late 1700s. Those first “vehicles” were powered by steam. It was an energy source that had been used for many years to power trains. However, it wasn’t until the 1870s that steam power became more practical for small cars. Despite the improvements, there were still many drawbacks. Steam-powered vehicles took a long time to start and had a limited cruising range.
Inventors around the world began manufacturing electric buggies in the early 1800s. Decades later, British and French inventors created cars that were much closer to today’s electric cars. In 1890, William Morrison built the first electric vehicle in the United States. The car can seat 6 people and move at 14 mph. But there was one problem with early electric vehicles. People were interested in owning them, but the elaborate machines were too expensive for the middle class.
At the time electric vehicles were on their way to being the norm. It was Karl Benz in 1885 who invented the first gas-powered car. The invention of the gas-powered automobile marked the beginning of vehicular evolution. This first car didn’t have windshields, doors, turn signals, or even round steering wheels. Karl Benz’s first fuel-powered car was the most important catalyst for the production of modern cars, as many automakers followed in his footsteps and tried to build their version of the car.
The electric car showed great promise because it didn’t have unsettling exhaust like gas cars, nor did it have a long start-up time, like steam-powered vehicles, and it was faster than a horse carriage. But several roadblocks inhibited this eco-friendly option from advancing.
Electric cars quickly became popular with urban residents where electricity was readily available and as more people gained access to electricity, the more popular they became. This popularity caught the eye of many pioneers of the day. Parsche developed the worlds’s first hybrid car while Thomas Edison even partnered with friend and former employee Henry Ford to build an affordable EV.
Today, the opposite is true. The high cost of gasoline and pollution concerns have helped electric vehicles make a comeback. And Thomas Edison would be happy to know that the latest EVs have batteries that will go up to 400+ miles.
Automakers, feeling this social shift, started to explore options for alternative fuel vehicles, including electric cars. For instance, General Motors developed a prototype for an urban EV and even NASA helped raise the profile when their electric Lunar rover became the first manned vehicle on the moon. The new automotive industry in which EVs are the clear leader, is still evolving where old guards are falling while new ones are taking over, by reinventing the proven methodologies, like mass production/ lean manufacturing, which was mastered over almost a century during the rise of Internal Combustion Engine Vehicles.
- The amount of EVs on the road has exploded—from negligible in 2010, to approximately 1 million in 2016 and by the end of 2020, there were as many as 10 million electric cars on the world’s roads.
- Tesla is the most valuable automotive company on the planet—worth and estimated $1 trillion—and co-founder/CEO Elon Musk is, for a large part thanks to Tesla, the richest man on the planet.
- Despite the global downturn in vehicle sales due to the pandemic, electric car registrations increased by 41 percent in 2020, reaching 4.6 percent of all car sales globally.
The Autombile Engine Will Come, And Then I’ll Consider My lifes Work Complete.”
Rudolf Diesel
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1 comment
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