The Battery Electric Vehicle’s unabridged history
HOLY TIMELINE! The Battery Electric Vehicle’s (BEV’s) unabridged history.
Early 1800s: Long before German Karl Benz earned a patent for a three-wheeled petroleum-powered automobile, experimenters in Hungary, the Netherlands, and the US fiddled with small-scale electrically-powered vehicles.
1837: Robert Davidson built the first battery-electric car in Aberdeen, Scotland. He followed with an unsuccessful battery-powered locomotive called Galvani.
1859: Lead-acid batteries were invented by Frenchman Gaston Plante. A dozen years later, this technology was suitable for mass production.
1884: English inventor Thomas Parker designed the world’s first production electric car.
1888: Croatian born Nikola Tesla earned a patent for his AC electric motor.
1890: William Morrison of Des Moines, Iowa, was the first to develop an electric car in the US.
1899: Belgian Camille Jenatzy broke the world’s absolute speed record with his battery-electric Jamais Contente, achieving 65.8 mph in a race near Paris, France.
1890: Electrics held near-equal footing with petroleum- and steam-powered vehicles. A fleet of 62 electric taxis plied the streets of New York City. Women adored the electrics’ instant starting and no hand cranking attributes.
1900: A gasoline-electric hybrid designed by Ferdinand Porsche was produced for six years by Jacob Lohner in Austria. More than 300 massive carriages were sold for commercial and military use.
Baker, Studebaker, and Detroit Electric were the major electric car makers in the US.
1912: Electric car popularity declined for three reasons. Cadillac began offering electric starting for combustion engines, a technology that rapidly spread throughout the US auto industry. Henry Ford’s new Model T dropped the price of a new car to less than half the cost on an electric. And the discovery of crude oil in Pennsylvania and Texas made gasoline the fuel of choice.
1914: Henry Ford told the New York Times he intended to launch production of an electric car in collaboration with Thomas Edison. That effort was stymied by the lack of suitable batteries.
1960s: After half a century of slumber, interest in electric cars was rekindled by the rise of experimental models exploiting light-weight construction, compact design, and nickel-cadmium batteries.
1966: GM showed its Electrovair battery-electric conversion.
1971: The Lunar rover developed by Boeing and GM for NASA’s Apollo 15 mission used a DC electric motor in each wheel hub and two 36-volt silver-zinc potassium hydroxide batteries to transport two astronauts over the moon’s surface.
1973 and 1978: Two global energy crises triggered interest in gasoline alternatives.
GM’s 1976 Electrovette experimental began the long path to a mass market electric car.
Beating America’s largest manufacturer to the punch, tiny Sebring-Vanguard built and sold more than 4000 electric city cars offering 50 or so miles of driving range.
1990: The California Air Resources board and the US Clean Air Act Amendment imposed stringent exhaust emissions limits. To satisfy California’s new Zero Emissions mandate, volume car makers had to offer pure electrics in the Golden State.
GM’s Impact forecast that company’s first production electric.
1996: The EV1 two-seat electric, which GM leased through Arizona, California, and Georgia Saturn dealerships, offered 80 miles of zero-emissions driving. After delivering 1117 cars over four model years, all were recalled by GM and crushed except for a few inoperable museum displays. This prompted Hollywood’s documentary Who Killed the Electric Car espousing various conspiracy theories. GM’s rejoinder was that after investing more than $1-billion in the EV1 program it couldn’t bear the ongoing cost of service, spare parts, and liability.
1997: Toyota’s Prius, the first modern age gas-electric hybrid, went on sale in Japan.
1999: Honda beat Toyota to the punch here with its two-seat Insight, the first hybrid sold in the US.
2003: Tesla Motors, Inc. is founded with a mission to “accelerate the transition to a sustainable transportation future” and show the industry that electric vehicles can be desirable if designed and marketed properly.
2008: Tesla began building and selling its $109,000 two-seat Roadster electric vehicle offering over 200 miles of range.
2009: The US Energy Department’s Recovery Act provided $115-million for electric vehicle charging infrastructure.
2010: The plug-in hybrid Chevy Volt and the Nissan Leaf BEV went on sale in the US.
Tesla received a $465-million Department of Energy loan (since repaid) to expand its manufacturing facilities in GM and Toyota’s shuttered NUMMI factory in Fremont, California.
2012: Tesla’s Model S electric luxury sedan began competing successfully against BMW, Cadillac, Lexus, and Mercedes-Benz on a global scale, eventually overtaking them as the best selling vehicle in its class.
2013: Leaf battery manufacturing and assembly operations commenced in Tennessee.
The Chevy Volt began using lithium-ion batteries which were less expensive and more energy dense than nickel metal hydride batteries.
2015: British vacuum cleaner maker Dyson paid $90-million to purchase Michigan-based Sakti3, a leading exponent of solid-state lithium battery development. With government backing, Dyson hopes to build and sell electric vehicles.
Tesla added the Model X crossover utility vehicle to its lineup.
Upon announcement of the Tesla Model 3 sedan with a starting price of $35,000, more than half-a-million customers placed $1000 deposits to reserve a car, forever disproving claims that “there is no market for electric vehicles”.
2016: Deliveries of the Chevrolet Bolt began in southern California with a base price of $37,495. LG of Korea assisted GM on the design and manufacture of cockpit displays, the lithium-ion battery pack, the electric motor, and the transaxle. The EPA gave the Bolt a 238-mile combined-driving range rating. Thus far, Bolt has earned wide acclaim from reviews and early adopters.
2017: Tesla Model 3 deliveries began much slower than anticipated with initial models costing over $50,000 with (mandatory) upgrade equipment.
2018: Tesla boss Elon Musk launched his personal Roadster into deep space aboard a SpaceX rocket.
Tesla retired its original reservation program for a new one requiring a down payment of $2500 and no cancellation option.
There are currently two-dozen plug-ins (BEVs and PHEVs) and three dozen hybrids on the market in the US with 3.5 million such vehicles currently on the road.
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