The History of the Electric Car
By U.S. Department of Energy
Introduced more than 100 years ago, electric
cars are seeing a rise in popularity today for many of the same reasons
they were first popular.
Whether it’s a hybrid, plug-in hybrid or
all-electric, the demand for electric drive vehicles will continue to
climb as prices drop and consumers look for ways to save money at the
pump. Currently more than 3 percent of new vehicle sales, electric
vehicles sales could to grow to nearly 7 percent — or 6.6 million per
year — worldwide by 2020, according to a report by Navigant Research.
With this growing interest in electric
vehicles, we are taking a look at where this technology has been and
where it’s going. Travel back in time with us as we explore the history
of the electric car.
THE BIRTH OF THE ELECTRIC VEHICLE
It’s hard to pinpoint the invention of the
electric car to one inventor or country. Instead it was a series of
breakthroughs — from the battery to the electric motor — in the 1800s
that led to the first electric vehicle on the road.
In the early part of the century, innovators
in Hungary, the Netherlands and the United States — including a
blacksmith from Vermont — began toying with the concept of a
battery-powered vehicle and created some of the first small-scale
electric cars. And while Robert Anderson, a British inventor, developed
the first crude electric carriage around this same time, it wasn’t until
the second half of the 19th century that French and English inventors
built some of the first practical electric cars.
Here in the U.S., the first successful
electric car made its debut around 1890 thanks to William Morrison, a
chemist who lived in Des Moines, Iowa. His six-passenger vehicle capable
of a top speed of 14 miles per hour was little more than an electrified
wagon, but it helped spark interest in electric vehicles.
Over the next few years, electric vehicles
from different automakers began popping up across the U.S. New York City
even had a fleet of more than 60 electric taxis. By 1900, electric cars
were at their heyday, accounting for around a third of all vehicles on
the road. During the next 10 years, they continued to show strong sales.
THE EARLY RISE AND FALL OF THE ELECTRIC CAR
To understand the popularity of electric
vehicles circa 1900, it is also important to understand the development
of the personal vehicle and the other options available. At the turn of
the 20th century, the horse was still the primary mode of
transportation. But as Americans became more prosperous, they turned to
the newly invented motor vehicle — available in steam, gasoline or
electric versions — to get around.
Steam was a tried and true energy source,
having proved reliable for powering factories and trains. Some of the
first self-propelled vehicles in the late 1700s relied on steam; yet it
took until the 1870s for the technology to take hold in cars. Part of
this is because steam wasn’t very practical for personal vehicles. Steam
vehicles required long startup times — sometimes up to 45 minutes in
the cold — and would need to be refilled with water, limiting their
range.
As electric vehicles came onto the market, so did a new type of vehicle — the gasoline-powered car — thanks to improvements to the internal combustion engine in the 1800s. While gasoline cars had promise, they weren’t without their faults. They required a lot of manual effort to drive — changing gears was no easy task and they needed to be started with a hand crank, making them difficult for some to operate. They were also noisy, and their exhaust was unpleasant.
Electric cars didn’t have any of the issues
associated with steam or gasoline. They were quiet, easy to drive and
didn’t emit a smelly pollutant like the other cars of the time. Electric
cars quickly became popular with urban residents — especially women.
They were perfect for short trips around the city, and poor road
conditions outside cities meant few cars of any type could venture
farther. As more people gained access to electricity in the 1910s, it
became easier to charge electric cars, adding to their popularity with
all walks of life (including some of the “best known and prominent
makers of gasoline cars” as a 1911 New York Times article pointed out).
Many
innovators at the time took note of the electric vehicle’s high demand,
exploring ways to improve the technology. For example, Ferdinand
Porsche, founder of the sports car company by the same name, developed
an electric car called the P1 in
1898. Around the same time, he created the world’s first hybrid
electric car — a vehicle that is powered by electricity and a gas
engine. Thomas Edison, one of the world’s most prolific inventors,
thought electric vehicles were the superior technology and worked to
build a better electric vehicle battery. Even Henry Ford, who was
friends with Edison, partnered with Edison to explore options for a
low-cost electric car in 1914, according to Wired.
Yet, it was Henry Ford’s mass-produced Model T
that dealt a blow to the electric car. Introduced in 1908, the Model T
made gasoline-powered cars widely available and affordable. By 1912, the
gasoline car cost only $650, while an electric roadster sold for
$1,750. That same year, Charles Kettering introduced the electric
starter, eliminating the need for the hand crank and giving rise to more
gasoline-powered vehicle sales.
Other developments also contributed to the
decline of the electric vehicle. By the 1920s, the U.S. had a better
system of roads connecting cities, and Americans wanted to get out and
explore. With the discovery of Texas crude oil, gas became cheap and
readily available for rural Americans, and filling stations began
popping up across the country. In comparison, very few Americans outside
of cities had electricity at that time. In the end, electric vehicles
all but disappeared by 1935.
GAS SHORTAGES SPARK INTEREST IN ELECTRIC VEHICLES
Over the next 30 years or so, electric
vehicles entered a sort of dark ages with little advancement in the
technology. Cheap, abundant gasoline and continued improvement in the
internal combustion engine hampered demand for alternative fuel
vehicles.
Fast forward to the late 1960s and early
1970s. Soaring oil prices and gasoline shortages — peaking with the 1973
Arab Oil Embargo — created a growing interest in lowering the U.S.’s
dependence on foreign oil and finding homegrown sources of fuel.
Congress took note and passed the Electric and Hybrid Vehicle Research,
Development, and Demonstration Act of 1976, authorizing the Energy
Department to support research and development in electric and hybrid
vehicles.
Around this same time, many big and small
automakers began exploring options for alternative fuel vehicles,
including electric cars. For example, General Motors developed a
prototype for an urban electric car that it displayed at the
Environmental Protection Agency’s First Symposium on Low Pollution Power
Systems Development in 1973, and the American Motor Company produced
electric delivery jeeps that the United States Postal Service used in a
1975 test program. Even NASA helped raise the profile of the electric
vehicle when its electric Lunar rover became the first manned vehicle
drive on the moon in 1971.
Yet, the vehicles developed and produced in
the 1970s still suffered from drawbacks compared to gasoline-powered
cars. Electric vehicles during this time had limited performance —
usually topping at speeds of 45 miles per hour — and their typical range
was limited to 40 miles before needing to be recharged.
ENVIRONMENTAL CONCERN DRIVES ELECTRIC VEHICLES FORWARD
Fast forward again — this time to the 1990s.
In the 20 years since the long gas lines of the 1970s, interest in
electric vehicles had mostly died down. But new federal and state
regulations begin to change things. The passage of the 1990 Clean Air
Act Amendment and the 1992 Energy Policy Act — plus new transportation
emissions regulations issued by the California Air Resources Board —
helped create a renewed interest in electric vehicles in the U.S.
During this time, automakers began modifying some of their popular vehicle models into electric vehicles. This meant that electric vehicles now achieved speeds and performance much closer to gasoline-powered vehicles, and many of them had a range of 60 miles.
One of the most well-known electric cars during this time was GM’s EV1, a car that was heavily featured in the 2006 documentary Who Killed the Electric Car? Instead
of modifying an existing vehicle, GM designed and developed the EV1
from the ground up. With a range of 80 miles and the ability to
accelerate from 0 to 50 miles per hour in just seven seconds, the EV1
quickly gained a cult following. But because of high production costs,
the EV1 was never commercially viable, and GM discontinued it in 2001.
With a booming economy, a growing middle class
and low gas prices in the late 1990s, many consumers didn’t worry about
fuel-efficient vehicles. Even though there wasn’t much public attention
to electric vehicles at this time, behind the scenes, scientists and
engineers — supported by the Energy Department — were working to improve
electric vehicle technology, including batteries.
A NEW BEGINNING FOR ELECTRIC CARS
While all the starts and stops of the electric
vehicle industry in the second half of the 20th century helped show the
world the promise of the technology, the true revival of the electric
vehicle didn’t happen until around the start of the 21st century.
Depending on whom you ask, it was one of two events that sparked the
interest we see today in electric vehicles.
The
first turning point many have suggested was the introduction of the
Toyota Prius. Released in Japan in 1997, the Prius became the world’s
first mass-produced hybrid electric vehicle.
In 2000, the Prius was released worldwide, and it became an instant
success with celebrities, helping to raise the profile of the car. To
make the Prius a reality, Toyota used a nickel metal hydride battery — a
technology that was supported by the Energy Department’s research.
Since then, rising gasoline prices and growing concern about carbon
pollution have helped make the Prius the best-selling hybrid worldwide
during the past decade.
(Historical footnote: Before the Prius could
be introduced in the U.S., Honda released the Insight hybrid in 1999,
making it the first hybrid sold in the U.S. since the early 1900s.)
The other event that helped reshape electric
vehicles was the announcement in 2006 that a small Silicon Valley
startup, Tesla Motors, would start producing a luxury electric sports
car that could go more than 200 miles on a single charge. In 2010, Tesla
received at $465 million loanfrom the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office — a loan that Tesla repaid a full nine years early –
to establish a manufacturing facility in California. In the short time
since then, Tesla has won wide acclaim for its cars and has become the largest auto industry employer in California.
Tesla’s
announcement and subsequent success spurred many big automakers to
accelerate work on their own electric vehicles. In late 2010, the Chevy
Volt and the Nissan LEAF were released in the U.S. market. The first
commercially available plug-in hybrid,
the Volt has a gasoline engine that supplements its electric drive once
the battery is depleted, allowing consumers to drive on electric for
most trips and gasoline to extend the vehicle’s range. In comparison,
the LEAF is an all-electric vehicle (often
called a battery-electric vehicle, an electric vehicle or just an EV
for short), meaning it is only powered by an electric motor.
Over the next few years, other automakers
began rolling out electric vehicles in the U.S.; yet, consumers were
still faced with one of the early problems of the electric vehicle —
where to charge their vehicles on the go. Through the Recovery Act, the
Energy Department invested more than $115 million to help build a nation-wide charging infrastructure,
installing more than 18,000 residential, commercial and public chargers
across the country. Automakers and other private businesses also
installed their own chargers at key locations in the U.S., bringing
today’s total of public electric vehicle chargers to more than 8,000
different locations with more than 20,000 charging outlets.
At the same time, new battery technology — supported by the Energy Department’s Vehicle Technologies Office –
began hitting the market, helping to improve a plug-in electric
vehicle’s range. In addition to the battery technology in nearly all of
the first generation hybrids, the Department’s research also helped
develop the lithium-ion battery technology used in the Volt. More
recently, the Department’s investment in battery research and development has helped cut electric vehicle battery costs by 50 percent in the last four years,
while simultaneously improving the vehicle batteries’ performance
(meaning their power, energy and durability). This in turn has helped
lower the costs of electric vehicles, making them more affordable for
consumers.
Consumers now have more choices than ever when it comes to buying an electric vehicle. Today, there are 23 plug-in electric and 36 hybrid models available in a variety of sizes — from the two-passenger Smart ED to the midsized Ford C-Max Energi to the BMW i3 luxury SUV. As gasoline prices continue to rise and the prices on electric vehicles continue to drop, electric vehicles are gaining in popularity — with more than 234,000 plug-in electric vehicles and 3.3 million hybrids on the road in the U.S. today.
THE FUTURE OF ELECTRIC CARS
It’s hard to tell where the future will take
electric vehicles, but it’s clear they hold a lot of potential for
creating a more sustainable future. If we transitioned all the
light-duty vehicles in the U.S. to hybrids or plug-in electric vehicles
using our current technology mix, we could reduce our dependence on
foreign oil by 30-60 percent, while lowering the carbon pollution from
the transportation sector by as much as 20 percent.
To help reach these emissions savings, in 2012 President Obama launched the EV Everywhere Grand Challenge –
an Energy Department initiative that brings together America’s best and
brightest scientists, engineers and businesses to make plug-in electric
vehicles more as affordable as today’s gasoline-powered vehicles by
2022. On the battery front, the Department’sJoint Center for Energy Storage Research at Argonne National Laboratory is working to overcome the biggest scientific and technical barriers that prevent large-scale improvements of batteries.
And the Department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) is advancing game-changing technologies that could alter how we think of electric vehicles. From investing in new types of batteries that could go further on a single charge to cost-effective alternatives to materials critical to electric motors, ARPA-E’s projects could transform electric vehicles.
In the end, only time will tell what road electric vehicles will take in the future.
http://breakingenergy.com/2014/09/15/the-history-of-the-electric-car/?utm_source=Breaking+Energy&utm_campaign=d3f470a76c-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f852427a4b-d3f470a76c-407300641
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