Despite being dark and difficult times, there are a couple of good things that have come out of the current recession and energy crisis. Expensive products have had their prices forced down sooner than their makers would have liked (Blu-ray discs anyone?) and people are finally starting to wise up about the environment. The government's idiom that 'things will work themselves out' can no longer hide the fact that within 20 years our planet will be an uninhabitable dump.
That is, unless we change things. And since ICEs (Internal Combustion Engines) are one of the leading contributors to pollution, car manufacturers are suddenly doing a U turn on the abandoned electric car schemes of the 70's and 90's. This sounds perfectly logical, unless you happen to know a bit about the history of electric cars and why they never caught on...
Did you know that at the end of the 19th century, France and England were the first countries to support the widespread production of electric vehicles? Or that Thomas Parker, the inventor responsible for electrifying the London Underground and overhead tramways in London and Birmingham, claimed to have perfected a working electric car as early as 1884?
200 years ago, electric trains transported coal out of mines and electric cars held land speed records over their combustion engine rivals. In 1897 an entire fleet of New York taxis became the first public transport vehicles to embrace the electric car craze. It was all going so well...until Henry Ford stepped into the ring with his cheaper, gasoline-powered cars.
Luxurious electric cars had proved popular in high society - the average cost was the equivalent of £42,000 in today's money. By 1915 these 'EV's had reached their peak and couldn't compete with cheaper ICEs. Within the next five years Henry Ford had cornered the market with gas-powered vehicles that sold for as little as £5,440, while electric cars continued to rise in price.
Ford also won out in terms of the distance his Model-T could travel and the availability of refuelling stations. Early EVs could only travel at speeds ranging from 6 to 14mph, took up to 45 minutes to get going in cold weather and had to have their heavy batteries replaced every 50 miles or so. Since there were plenty of gas stations all over America and markedly less places to get batteries, ICEs inevitably proved the better option for consumers who wanted to travel greater distances with ease.