Early

electric automobiles

At the beginning of the 20th century, 40 percent of American automobiles were powered by steam, 38 percent by electricity, and 22 percent by gasoline. In the face of the gasoline car’s unreliability, noise, and vibration and the steamer’s complications and thirst, the electric offered attractive selling points: notably, instant self-start, silent operation, and minimal maintenance. The first automobile to exceed 100 km (60 miles) per hour was an electric (Camille Jenatzy’s La Jamais Contente, 1899). An electric, also Jenatzy’s, had been the easy winner in 1898 of a French hill-climb contest to assay the three forms of power.

Invention of the storage battery by Gaston Planté of France in 1859–60 and its improvement by Camille Faure in 1881 made the electric vehicle possible, and what was probably the first, a tricycle, ran in Paris in 1881. It was followed by other three-wheelers in London (1882) and Boston (1888). The first American battery-powered automobile, built in Des Moines, Iowa, c. 1890, by William Morrison, could maintain a speed of 14 miles (23 km) per hour.

The popularity of the electric car was hampered by a lack of battery-charging infrastructure. Prior to 1910, few private homes, even in cities, were wired with electricity, and community charging stations and battery exchange schemes failed to catch on. By 1912 the problem had been overcome, and the electric had its heyday. Some 20 companies were in the trade and 33,842 electric cars were registered in the United States, the country in which they had maximum acceptance. It was another application of battery power, the electric self-starter, that did as much as anything to doom the electric car by eliminating the dreaded hand crank and making the internal-combustion engine car amenable to operation by women. Further, the electric had never really been suited to other than limited urban use because of its low speed (15–20 miles, or 24–32 km, per hour), short range (30–40 miles, or about 50–65 km), and lengthy time required for recharging. The heyday of the electric car in America had ended by 1920, although a few manufacturers offered them on special order until World War II. The war, however, gave rise to experiments with small electric cars in fuel-starved France and resulted in extensive use of electric vehicles for milk delivery in Britain, which continued in urban areas there for the rest of the century.