Battery Operated

BEVs were among the earliest automobiles. Between 1832 and 1839 (the exact year is uncertain), Scottish businessman Robert Anderson invented the first crude electric carriage. more...

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Professor Sibrandus Stratingh of Groningen, Netherlands, designed the small-scale electric car, built by his assistant Christopher Becker in 1835.

The improvement of the storage battery, by Frenchmen Gaston Plante in 1865 and by Camille Faure in 1881, paved the way for electric vehicles to flourish. France and Great Britain were the first nations to support the widespread development of electric vehicles.

Just prior to 1900, before the pre-eminence of powerful but polluting internal combustion engines, electric automobiles held many speed and distance records. Among the most notable of these records was the breaking of the 100 km/h (60 mph) speed barrier, by Camille Jenatzy on April 29, 1899 in his 'rocket-shaped' EV, La Jamais Contente which reached a top speed of 105.88 km/h (65.79 mph).

BEVs, produced by Anthony Electric, Baker Electric, Detroit Electric and others during the early 20th Century for a time out-sold gasoline-powered vehicles. Due to technological limitations and the lack of transistor-based electric technology, the top speed of these early production electric vehicles was limited to about 32 km/h (20 mph). These vehicles were successfully sold as town cars to upper-class customers and were often marketed as suitable vehicles for women drivers due to their clean, quiet and easy operation.

The introduction of the electric starter by Cadillac in 1913 simplified the task of starting the internal combustion engine, formerly difficult and sometimes dangerous. This innovation contributed to the downfall of the electric vehicle, as did the invention of the radiator, in use as early as 1895 by Panhard-Levassor in their Systeme Panhard design, which allowed engines to keep cool enough to run for more than a few minutes, rather than stop often at horse troughs to cool down and replenish their water supply. EVs may have fallen out of favor because of the mass-produced and relatively inexpensive Ford Model-T, which had been produced for four years, since 1908. Internal-combustion vehicles advanced technologically, ultimately becoming more practical than -- and out-performing -- their electric-powered competitors.

Another blow to BEVs was the loss of Edison's direct current electric power transmission system in the War of Currents. This deprived the BEV of the source of DC current necessary to recharge their batteries. As the technology of rectifiers was still in its infancy, producing DC current locally was unfeasable.

By the late 1930s, the electric automobile industry had completely disappeared, with battery-electric traction being limited to niche applications, such as certain industrial vehicles.

Read more at Wikipedia.org