The future is electric, once again Premium

This is not the first time electric vehicles (EVs) have gained in popularity. They were quite the rage more than 100 years ago in the early 1900s, with EVs constituting over a third of all vehicles sold in the United States.

They are not just in the zeitgeist, but, increasingly, in our everyday lives too, as we find them whizzing past on the roads with green registration plates, making the familiar low-pitched humming sound. These are electric vehicles – cars, bikes, scooters, hauling three-wheelers, and even garbage collection carts.

But you might be surprised to know that this is not the first time electric vehicles (EVs) have gained in popularity. They were quite the rage more than 100 years ago in the early 1900s, with EVs constituting over a third of all vehicles sold in the United States. A timeline by the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) dates back the prototypes of the EVs to developments in the 1820s with the invention of the electric motor by the Hungarian engineer Ányos István Jedlik and other technological breakthroughs in the U.S., Netherlands, and Hungary. The first form of an EV was a “crude electric carriage” developed almost 200 years ago in 1832, by a Scotsman - Robert Anderson.

However renewed interest in EVs had to wait until the widespread adoption of electricity across cities in the U.S. and Western Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. EVs began sprouting across the Atlantic during this time. While William Morrison, an American chemist created what was a “little more than an electric wagon” in the 1890s, Ferdinand Porsche, who went on to form the iconic German sports car company by the same name, developed an electric car called the Egger-Lohner C.2 Phaeton in 1898. “The vehicle was powered by an octagonal electric motor, and with three to five PS it reached a top speed of 25 km/h,” states an article on the company’s website. Incidentally, Porche also designed the world’s first petrol-electric hybrid in 1900. The production-ready version of the vehicle was called the Mixte.

There are similarities in the reasons for the rise of EVs between now and then — the initial internal combustion engines (ICE) were noisy and polluting. They were difficult to drive, requiring the operation of a manual crank to power them on. Changing gears was not as smooth as they are today. This is why the early EVs became especially popular with women. A January 20, 1911, a New York Times article states, “Ever since the small electric runabouts were introduced, about ten years ago, they have always been popular with women. In the early days of motoring, the little electrics were about the only kind of motor car a woman could handle easily, as the early gasoline cars required more strength to crank than most women possess.” The Times went on to say that “the designers of the electric passenger carrying vehicles have made great advances in the past few years, and these machines have retained all their early popularity and are steadily growing in favour with both men and women.”

But three years before this article was published, Henry Ford had introduced the mass-produced Model T. By 1912, the petrol Model T car cost $650, while an electric sold for almost three times the price at $1,750. This and the electric starter, which did away with the hand crank, and the discovery of crude oil in Texas in the 1920s, leading to petrol refill stations coming up across rural Europe and America, pretty much put paid to the early EVs by 1935.

Some similarities between the rise of early EVs and those on the roads now remain. EVs continue to be easier to drive, and they do not pollute, while even the cleanest of ICE vehicles emit particulate matter. Moreover, the correlation between vehicle emissions that contribute to the formation of greenhouse gases, which in turn leads to global warming, drove technological advancements in EVs., mainly to address what limited their uptake in the early days – the inability to attain higher speeds and the modest range of the battery motor, allowing only for short trips within urban settings.

According to the Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA), the transport sector accounted for almost a quarter (23%) of global energy-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, making this sector the third biggest contributor to climate change after energy and industries. Of this, 75% of emissions were from road transport, and passenger cars alone accounted for almost half, that is 45% of total transport emissions in 2023. While aviation emissions were the next big chunk, they were way behind road transport at 11%, shipping was at another 10% and rail constituted the lowest at just 4%.