REV takes you through the surprising journey of EVs – from their early dominance to their fall from grace after the oil boom and eventual resurgence in the modern era. We uncover the fascinating history of electric cars.
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00:00Did you know electric vehicles once looked like this, this, and even this?
00:08In fact, they were the very first mass-produced motor cars to gain popularity.
00:12Over the years they've ranged from practical and cool to odd and downright bizarre.
00:17Join us as we delve into the history of the earliest EVs and the weird and wonderful electric
00:22vehicles that saw the light of day before we got to today.
00:27Think electric cars are new?
00:29Think again.
00:30Over a hundred years ago EVs had put an end to the era of horse-drawn carriages and along
00:34with it the need to dodge horse droppings.
00:37EVs proved more convenient than steam cars and easier, cheaper and cleaner to run than
00:43their gas-guzzling rivals.
00:45So why did the world abandon these once-beloved machines?
00:54In the early 1900s, ICEs needed to be hand-cranked, plus they rattled and shook rather a lot.
01:00And fuel was more expensive than electricity, all of which worked in the favor of EVs, until
01:05the American oil boom and the Ford Model T knocked electric vehicles off their pedestal.
01:11But over the course of history, the hope for battery-powered mobility never died.
01:15And especially when the threat of an oil crisis loomed, EVs had a habit of popping up, renewing
01:20the belief that they could solve the transport sector's energy wars.
01:27As recently as a few years ago, electric vehicles were considered machines of the future, ones
01:31that might someday prove to be the ideal way to meet our tailpipe emission-free goals.
01:37But even as they become increasingly common, manufacturers, energy companies and governments
01:41around the world are pushing to develop battery technology, charging infrastructure and EV
01:47policies.
01:48And while the debate rages on as to whether or not EVs truly can be the best way forward
01:52for our automotive future, it's easy to forget that they once were an integral part of our
01:57automotive past.
02:04The early days of EVs were experimental to say the least.
02:07After all, it was the 1800s, a time of scientific discovery, innovation and rapid progress which
02:14saw the invention of modes of transport like the steam locomotive and the Velocipede.
02:20Some credit for getting us moving electrically goes to Hungarian priest and inventor, Anjos
02:26István Jedlik.
02:28He developed the lightning magnetic self-rotor, touted as the world's first electric motor.
02:34In 1828, he used this to propel a model car, setting the stage for further automotive development.
02:44In 1832, Scottish inventor Robert Anderson developed what's considered the world's first
02:54fully electric vehicle.
02:56It was essentially a carriage propelled by an electric motor.
02:59Unfortunately, though, the rechargeable battery hadn't been invented at the time.
03:03And once the machine had moved forward at its glacial top speed of 12 km an hour and
03:08exhausted the energy in its battery, the battery needed to be thrown away and replaced with
03:12a new one, not the most practical solution for an urban runabout.
03:17In 1859, French physicist Gaston Planté invented the rechargeable battery and EVs started making
03:24progress on rail and road.
03:26In 1884, Englishman Thomas Parker began experimenting with prototype EVs and in 1890, in the US,
03:33William Morrison applied for a patent on an electric car he'd built a few years earlier.
03:38What caused quite a stir and sparked the imagination of various inventors.
03:43Like Henry G. Morris and Pedro Salem who built the Electrobat, the first commercially viable
03:48electric car.
03:49They even made electric cabs which operated in cities like New York at the turn of the
03:53century.
03:54Believe it or not, these cabs ran almost uninterrupted thanks to their ingenious method of battery
03:59swapping that involved a crane and took all of three minutes.
04:04EVs were getting quicker too.
04:06Belgian Camille Janazzi became the first person in the world to break the 100km an hour barrier
04:11in his purpose-built electric race car, La Jamais Contente.
04:16French for never content, after which EVs seemed unstoppable.
04:21In fact, the first car Ferdinand Porsche had a hand in building, the Egger-loaner C2 Phaeton
04:25was an EV.
04:27Electric cars were simply taking over the streets.
04:34Things changed around 1908.
04:36More and more Model Ts began rolling off Henry Ford's assembly lines.
04:40That along with the discovery of cheap crude oil in Texas made the ICE a tempting proposition.
04:46The final nail in the EV coffin was Charles Kettering's electric self-starter which eliminated
04:51the inconvenience of hand-cranking a car.
04:57By 1923, the Model T cost half what an EV did, which meant the Tin Lizzy as it had been
05:04nicknamed was simply everywhere and had left the electric car eating its dust.
05:10The nation took the Model T to its heart.
05:13People called it a flipper, made jokes about it, loved it.
05:24By around the 1930s, electric vehicles were for all intents and purposes dead.
05:28Of course, there were a few exceptions, like in England where electric milk floats continued
05:32to be the norm from the time they were invented until around the 1980s.
05:36And although the first EVs had seemingly disappeared from the face of the earth, World War II did
05:41precipitate the invention of two rather significant machines, like this one.
05:47The Peugeot VLV or Voiture Légère de Ville, which translates to Light City Car.
05:54This mini cabriolet with staggered seating was possibly the world's first electric microcar.
06:00The VLV raised quite a few eyebrows when it was first announced, since no French carmakers
06:06at the time were considering electric propulsion.
06:10But with parts of France under German occupation, the VLV was Peugeot's clever way of sidestepping
06:16the fuel restriction imposed on French civilians.
06:20VLVs were mainly used by postal workers and doctors, but after just 377 units were produced,
06:30the Nazis banned the car's use.
06:34A few years later, post-war Japan was suffering from a severe shortage of oil, so running
06:39automobiles on electricity, which was cheap and plentiful, seemed like a good idea.
06:44So the Tokyo Electric Automobile Company came up with this, the Tama.
06:49Between 1947 and 1951, Tamas could be seen plying Japan's roads primarily as taxis.
06:56And the fact that the Tokyo Electric Automobile Company eventually morphed into Prince Automotive,
07:01which in turn became Datsun Nissan, means that long before the Leaf, Nissan had a successful
07:06EV in the form of the Tama.
07:15Across the pond, attempts to build EVs hadn't ground to a complete halt.
07:20And one of the first EVs in nearly two decades that showed promise just happened to be built
07:24by an electricity company that owned both a coach builder and a company that manufactured
07:29vacuum cleaners.
07:31In 1959, the Henney Motor Company, owned by the National Union Electric Company, which
07:37also owned Eureka Williams, created an EV called the Henney Kilowatt.
07:42Taking the shell and underpinnings from a Renault Dauphine, they replaced the rear engine
07:46with an electric motor and stored the batteries under the hood.
07:50National Union Electric was keen to manufacture EVs because they also produced the Exide batteries
07:55which powered these cars.
07:57But no storage space meant the EVs weren't very practical and they were expensive too.
08:03Of the 100 Kilowatts built, reportedly only 47 were ever sold, mostly to other electric
08:09companies.
08:11So, hopes that the Henney Kilowatt would become the next big EV were crushed pretty quickly.
08:22Then came the first proper EV attempt in decades by an American carmaker, General Motors Electroware.
08:29In 1964, GM took a Chevy Corvair and fitted it with a battery pack.
08:34Two years later, they went back to the drawing board using a 1966 Monza hardtop model to
08:39come up with the Electroware 2.
08:42The car had an induction motor at the rear and a battery pack up front and was by far
08:47the coolest looking EV manufactured up until then.
08:50The drawback was the battery was extremely heavy and needed to be replaced between the
08:546,500 and 12,500 km mark, which meant that the car was effectively a non-starter.
09:02GM also tried their hand at building an electrified Chevette called the Electrovette in the late
09:081970s.
09:09They were confident that their battery technology had significantly improved by then.
09:14This is a zinc nickel oxide battery which has about two to two and a half times the
09:19energy storage capability of the lead acid batteries which were formerly the only ones
09:24available.
09:25So this really is the breakthrough that makes possible an electric car like this.
09:30But despite testing multiple battery chemistries, the Electrovette simply didn't deliver on
09:35its promises.
09:36Other experimental American EVs of that era include General Electric's Delta and Ford's
09:42commuter prototype.
09:44But perhaps a General Motors EV from that era that can be considered something of a
09:51success wasn't even an EV that did most of its motoring on the surface of the earth.
10:01The Lunar Roving Vehicles or LRVs were battery-powered four-wheelers used during the last three Apollo
10:07missions.
10:08A joint effort by Boeing and General Motors, the first LRV was deployed on July 31, 1971
10:15during the Apollo 15 mission.
10:21The aim? To help astronauts cover more lunar surface during their expedition.
10:27Astronaut Eugene Cernan even set the unofficial lunar land speed record when he hit 18 km
10:32an hour in one.
10:34The Lunar Rovers were abandoned on the moon after Apollo missions 15, 16 and 17 where
10:39they remain to this day.
10:41Companies across the Atlantic were keen not to be left behind.
10:50In 1966 Enfield Automotive in England produced 120 E8000 electric cars of which 65 were used
10:58by the UK's Electricity Council.
11:00People took to them.
11:05On average you get a range of about 40 miles.
11:08It's adequate for my particular purposes and we clock up 30 to 40 miles a day.
11:13And British engineer Alistair Carter developed an EV called the Carter Coaster in 1967.
11:19Carter was so confident EVs were the way forward he even told the Daily Mail that he believed
11:24250,000 such cars would be on British roads within five short years.
11:29And these weren't the only examples.
11:33And over at the British Motor Corporation's Long Bridge headquarters, they don't intend
11:38to be left behind.
11:39In conjunction with a battery firm, it's planned to build an electric town car within
11:44two years.
11:45That's what ace car designer Alec Issigonis is working hard at.
11:54With an oil crisis looming, fears of future fuel shortages led several countries to start
11:59making concerted efforts to revive EVs.
12:04Until 1950, the United States could supply the energy needed.
12:08But in less than 25 years, we found ourselves in trouble.
12:13So the US Congress passed the Electric Hybrid Vehicle Research Development and Demonstration
12:18Act of 1976.
12:20But long before that in Germany, Opel was already breaking speed records in their Electro
12:26GT at Hockenheim.
12:27And BMW had already displayed their first electric car at the 1972 Munich Olympics.
12:33Two BMW 1602 EVs were used to ferry people around and to support track and field and
12:39marathon events.
12:40Comically, the car's range was just a bit longer than a full marathon distance, after
12:45which it needed a new battery.
12:47Volkswagen was at it too, testing a battery-powered microbus, or Bulli, back in 1972.
12:58The Electrobus was the brainchild of their Department of Future Research, and like the
13:03turn-of-the-century Electrobat, also featured battery swapping.
13:07The boffins from Wolfsburg implemented regenerative braking in the machine too.
13:13Though an actual electric VW bus, the ID Buzz only hit the market 40 years later.
13:26VW's attempts to combat the fuel crisis of the 70s even extended to their most popular
13:31model.
13:32In fact, this was the Electro Golf from 1976.
13:35VW engineers built 20 of them and drove them around Wolfsburg for 10 years gathering data
13:40on how they could improve battery tech for electric cars.
13:47See that?
13:48That's not a fuel filler, that's a socket.
13:51This car runs on electricity, electricity from the batteries up front.
13:55And they're charged via this socket here.
13:59New versions included the Golf 1 CityStromer in 1981, the Golf 2 CityStromer in 1985 and
14:06the Golf 3 CityStromer in 1993.
14:09But it wasn't until 2014 that VW began to seriously consider EVs again with their e-Golf.
14:21Let's flash forward to the 90s when attempts were being made to bring EVs into the present
14:26or judging by the design of this machine, the future.
14:30American car makers were under growing pressure from California to sell a certain percentage
14:34of zero emission vehicles if they wanted to do business in the state.
14:38So GM built and sold the EV1 from 96 to 99.
14:43Now seen as something of a cult car, back then rumours abounded that GM sabotaged the
14:48EV1's chances in order to keep selling ICEs.
14:53Jump ahead to 2012 and Silicon Valley was taking over with Tesla's Roadster becoming
14:58the best selling American made EV.
15:01But it was a brave little car that wore this crown until then, the Sebring Vanguard City Car.
15:06Conceived by Bob Beaumont, around 4,500 of these cheese wedges on wheels were sold between
15:121974 and 1977.
15:15A change in ownership meant it was eventually rebranded the commuter car and also came in
15:20a longer commuter van variant.
15:22It signalled the sort of EV people wanted to drive at the time and it was way ahead
15:27of electric quadricycles like the Opel Roxy or the Microlino.
15:34This desire for small practical electric cars made its presence felt around the world in
15:39the 2000s.
15:40In India, the Reva Electric Car Company sold the Reva and even exported it to the UK as
15:46the G-Wiz.
15:48And in Norway, spurred on by synth-pop eco-heroes AHA, Norwegians turned to two domestic models.
15:56The buddy EV and the Think City.
15:59Much like their spiritual forefathers, none of these little machines stood the test of
16:03time, but they kept the spark of the EV dream alive.
16:08Today, electric vehicles have gone relatively mainstream and come in all manner of conventional
16:12shapes and sizes.
16:15They might not be the most common machines on the road, fear still abounds as to whether
16:19or not they can be truly convenient and the jury is still out as to whether or not they're
16:23likely to save the planet.
16:25But even as manufacturers flip-flop about whether or not they're going fully electric,
16:29one thing we can all agree on is the era of the quirky electric vehicle is gone and it's
16:34a downright shame that we won't see any of these unusual machines brightening up the
16:39cityscape as we motor along.
16:45Machines like the truly bizarre Corbin Sparrow which quite frankly looked like a giant toe.
16:51Or the Sinclair C5 which was like a tiny electric go-kart or an accident waiting to happen.
16:57Or Opel's twin concept which let you swap the combustion engine at the back for a battery
17:02powered rear.
17:04Of course, some of these machines were non-starters, a little too odd and impractical to use.
17:10But if they hadn't been invented, we might not be able to drive around in modern EVs today.
17:17Or look back at the history of EVs with a mixture of admiration and amusement.
17:22After all, the weird and wonderful arguably do have a role to play in the course of innovation.