History of electric vehicles

 

Though EVs today are presented as new innovations the fact is such that such cars go back around a century while there is a dispute at what point in history EVs were born.

We can take 1828 as our starting point that's when Anyos Istvan Jedlik made the first electric car. Histories skip that contribution because it was just a model. Rather they take 1834 or 1835 as the year in which electric cars were born and give credit to an American Thomas davenport. He built a small locomotive that was powered by two electromagnets and ran on a track.

During 1900 electric cars made up about a third of all cars manufactured in the united states. However, by the 1920s electric cars would stop being commercially viable as gas power became a lot more accessible and people wanted vehicles that could go longer distances and had more horsepower.

During 1908 the mass-production of gas powered cars had begun and these cars continued to advance, while gas was plentiful and inexpensive. People were content with their internal combustion engines. But by the late 1960s there was a change. Gas price started to climb steeply and there was the beginning of concern over air pollution. The government introduces the first bills promoting EVs in 1966.

By the rise of government regulations American car makers tried to integrate electric power in cars in the form of hybrids. But the real revolution in the field came out of Japan. Toyota introduces the Prius . The first commercially mass produced and marketed hybrid car. It was a hit from the start with close to 18000 units sold in the first year. The other manufactures entered the arena most notably Tesla.

In 2006, the firm unveiled the Tesla Roadster. While in 2009, GM released the Chevy Volt which marked the first for plug-in hybrids. The technology used in its battery was developed by the US Department of energy. More importantly for the electric car market as a whole the department of energy invested in the batteries used for such cars, which reduced the price by half over the earlier part of this decade.

By 2014, there were 23 plug-ins and 36 hybrid car models on the market. That number has grown with contributions from automakers around the world and new models is billed as completion for Tesla come out every year. The EV world is rising.