What the first electric cars in history looked like: they appeared before conventional cars. Photo

The history of electric vehicles did not begin with the mass production of Tesla, and few people know that the progenitor of the modern electric car appeared almost 200 years ago, in the distant 1830s. It's hard to imagine, but the first motorized carriage appeared long before the creation of internal combustion engines.

At the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the automotive industry began to develop at an incredible pace. Car and driver magazine told us what the first electric cars looked like and how their history began (to see photos and videos, scroll down to the end of the article).

Electric carriages

A Scotsman named Robert Anderson built a motorized carriage sometime between 1832 and 1839. The batteries (galvanic cells) could not yet be recharged, so it was hardly a full-fledged vehicle. Another Scotsman, Robert Davidson from Aberdeen, built a prototype electric locomotive in 1837.

The version demonstrated in 1841 could travel 1.5 miles (2.4 km) at 4 miles (6.4 km) per hour, towing six tons.

The idea of an electric car

In 1859, with the advent of rechargeable batteries, the idea of an electric car became more viable. So in 1884, Thomas Parker created a prototype of a full-fledged car.

Further inventions followed one after another. A patent for an electric carriage was granted to a Scottish chemist named William Morrison, who lived in Iowa, USA. It had a maximum speed of 32 km/h and needed recharging every 80 km. The carriage was equipped with 24 batteries. This invention became a real sensation at the World's Fair in Chicago in 1893.

The electric taxi

A year later, in 1894, Pedro Salom and Henry J. Morris of Philadelphia adapted the technology and received a patent for a very slow and heavy (trolley-like) vehicle.

In 1896, a competition between electric cars and gasoline cars took place. The Electrobats and Riker electric cars won the sprint race.

Morris and Salom subsequently built several Hansom electric taxis to compete with the horse-drawn vehicles that were then serving New York City.

By the early twentieth century, more than 600 electric taxis were already operating in New York, Boston, and Baltimore.

Electric vehicles have proven their strength and competitiveness.

Speed record

The speed revolution took place in 1899 when Camille Genatzi, a builder of electric carriages, became the first to break 100 km/h at the wheel of his racing car La Jamais Contente ("Never Satisfied").

At the turn of the century, steam power dominated for a very simple reason: the car market was too expensive, and electric cars were a kind of rich man's toy or inventor's hobby.

Gasoline cars or electric cars

Ransom Eli Olds developed the first mass-produced Oldsmobile cars – the only known electric car to survive today is in a museum in Lansing, Michigan.

A 23-year-old young inventor Ferdinand Porsche designed the Egger-Lohner C.2 Phaeton electric car. His son founded the Porsche brand after World War II.

Thomas Edison and his friend Henry Ford also tried their hand at electric cars and created at least one prototype before both decided that the gasoline engine had a more promising future.

The explanation was very simple – in those days, electricity was not widely available outside of large cities, and this severely limited the market for electric cars. Drivers could take spare gasoline cans with them for long journeys, but spare batteries were much heavier.

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