FOR MANY, the electric car is seen as a modern artefact of the environmental movement. However, electric vehicles have had a long and varied history since they were invented in the 1800s. Between 1899 and 1902 the world road-speed record was held by Camille Jenatzy, who drove into the record books with his Jamais Contente - a car powered by electricity.
The cars popularity has varied with technological advances, changes in vehicle costs, public concerns about the environment and government-led initiatives.
The first electric vehicle, built in the United States by Thomas Davenport in 1834, was powered by a non-rechargeable battery and was in the form of a tricycle.
Sir David Salomons built a rechargeable battery-powered vehicle in 1874, and a number of other electric vehicles were developed in Britain and the US during the 1880s and 1890s. By the summer of 1897, there were 13 electric taxis in New York and 15 in London.
In 1900, 38 per cent of the vehicles sold in America were EVs, 22 per cent were powered by internal combustion engines and 40 per cent were steam powered. However, by 1912, there were 900,000 petrol-engined vehicles in the US, compared with about 30,000 electric vehicles. Faced with cheaper, mass-produced petrol-powered models, such as the Ford Model T, electric vehicles went into rapid decline.
By the early 1920s, the petrol-engined vehicle dominated world markets. 'To all intents and purposes the electric vehicle industry was dead,' wrote Michael H. Westbrook in his 2001 book The Electric and Hybrid Electric Car. An exception to this was to be found in Britain in the 1940s and early 50s, where electric cars started being used for milk deliveries. Some 20,000 'milk floats' were built and, as of 2001, most were still in use. The vehicles had relatively short driving ranges - about 30 kilometres a day - which made them well suited to short-haul delivery work.