By the 1890s, steam had established itself as the main source of power for trains, industrial applications and even the occasional passenger car. Gasoline-powered personal transportation was still in its infancy. So electric vehicles were preferred by most because they didn’t require a dangerous crank-starting procedure, they didn’t backfire and spew oil everywhere, and they were perceived as quiet and torquey.
Remember, this was a time when you'd get gasoline from your local pharmacist or the area blacksmith, if you had either, not a gas station on every corner.
If you were around back then you'd probably be more into batteries too.
(Welcome to The History of Electric Vehicles, where we'll cover the many ways that EVs have been a part of more than 150 years of automotive history. In this installment, we'll look at EVs' role in the earliest days of the horseless carriage. See part one here.)
EVs Make History In The Early Days Of The Automobile
The two-decade period from the 1890s until the 1910s is considered by historians as having been the peak of electric vehicle adoption before EVs fell out of favor for a century until they became popular again in the 2010s when cars like the Nissan Leaf and Tesla Model S were introduced.
It may come as a surprise, but around 38% of all motor vehicles registered in the United States in 1900 were electric. That's a total of 33,842 EVs, which grew to over 38,000 by 1912.
EVs also held early motor car records including for the fastest vehicle. The torpedo-shaped Le Jamais Contente (“The Never Satisfied”), for instance, built by Belgian Camille Jenatzy, was the first car to exceed 62 mph (100 km/h) in 1899. It was powered by a pair of electric motors and had a lightweight shell made out of an aluminum alloy. Its aerodynamic shape, however crude, was a far cry from the tall and ungainly horseless carriages of the time, and this, combined with its silent electric power, made it way ahead of its time.
Several manufacturers began series production of EVs in the early 1900s. Most of them were from America, like the Waverly Company, Studebaker Electric, Beardsley Electric Company, Columbia Electric and Baker Electric.
They each built a few hundred EVs for both personal and commercial use, but the most prolific manufacturer of early EVs (by number of vehicles sold) was Detroit Electric, which was in business between 1907 and 1939.
Detroit Electric is said to have built a total of about 13,000 EVs, and during its peak after 1910, it was selling between 1,000 and 2,000 battery-powered cars per year—it would take almost exactly 100 years for its annual EV sales figures to be exceeded.
These early EVs were marketed as luxurious city runabouts, and many celebrities used them to run errands around town. Some shopping centers even had electric car chargers to encourage wealthy EV owners to do their shopping there.
Most EVs of the time had a limited range, no more than 40 miles on one charge, and a top speed of about 20 mph. Some of the longest-range EVs were made by the Los Angeles-based Beardsley Electric Company, which got 35 of its cars together in April of 1916 for a grand tour of Southern California. The cars reportedly averaged about 70 miles of range, which was really impressive for the time, although still not enough to match combustion cars.
It's worth noting that many of these early EVs were especially popular with, and marketed to, women. Early gas cars took tremendous strength to start and a backfiring hand crank could break a grown man's arm—not to mention how bad they smelled. Many women found the quiet, lack of smells and ease of use of electric cars to be a vastly preferable experience, and automakers responded in kind.
"You can learn to run The Baker in 20 minutes," one early advertisement read. "It far exceeds all other electrics in simplicity, safety, as well as mileage and speed. It is noiseless and clean; having a battery capacity of 70 to 100 miles, it is unequalled for city and suburban use."
Another famous electric car of the early 1900s was Oliver Parker Fritchle's 100-Mile Fritchle Electric, which, as its name implied, could travel 100 miles on one charge. It weighed around 2,100 pounds, it had a 10-horsepower electric motor and thanks to its eight speeds could reach a peak of 25 mph.
It is also one of the earliest known electric vehicles to successfully employ brake energy recuperation (or "electric brakes" as the feature was known back in the day.)
There were also electric vans being manufactured in the early 1900s, which were used by some businesses for last-mile delivery duty, but they were also ambulances and police wagons. In the United Kingdom, electric milk delivery vehicles (known as “milk floats”) entered service in the early 1900s, and they evolved and remained electric over many decades before supermarkets and home refrigerators made them obsolete.
The biggest problems faced by early EVs were their high cost, limited range, expensive batteries that took a long time to charge and the fact that combustion engine cars were getting better. Sound familiar?
What sealed the fate of early EVs was the proliferation of the electric starter motor, which eliminated the need for those difficult hand-crank engines. This was such a revolution that by the mid-1920s it had put almost all electric car manufacturers out of business.
But the battery-powered car itself was far from done, even then. In our next installment, we'll look at the original EV downturn and how the fuel and resource shortages of World War II and its aftermath nearly gave the idea life again.
Did You Know?
The 1922 Detroit Electric was a posh two-door EV that sold for almost $3,000 in an era when a Ford Model T cost less than $500—that's about six times more. It had a top speed of around 25 to 30 mph and it could travel up to 90 miles on one charge.
