Influential EVs: an illustrated history of electric car design
EVs might be a hot topic now, but even before Karl Benz patented his internal combustion car in 1886, our ancestors and forebears were already finding ways to electrify a chassis with wheels. In fact gasoline, electricity, steam, coal gas, compressed air, superheated water and even a spring-motor device that stored energy running downhill and used it going uphill were all competing forms of propulsion at the dawn of the car. The earliest record of an electric passenger vehicle dates back to April 1880 and the brainchild of French inventor and electrical engineer Gustave Pierre Trouvé. Built using a James Starley English tricycle, the first electric car was a three-wheeledr with a modified Siemens electric motor and lead-acid battery pack.