Electric cars - 100 years ago and now

There's a ridiculous myth according to which electric cars were "suppressed" by the evil "oil lobby" and that they were really much better than gasoline ones.

This is simply untrue. Electric cars were actually among the very first to be introduced and were used in parallel with internal combustion engine vehicles. They simply turned out not to be competitive for many reasons, but mostly because of the very limited capacity of the batteries. Electric cars were also far more sensitive to cold weather.

The competition was intense and electric car manufacturers were heavily promoting their models, so everyone knew about them.

Charging an electric car in a garage, New York, 1911

The first electric taxies arrived on the streets of New York City in 1897

Modern electric cars

The problems didn't go away - modern electric cars still have a massive issue with range, with cold weather etc. despite massively improved battery technology. The energy density is still far too low!