Wood Electric Carriage
With all the news lately about the difficulty the Big Three automakers have finding adequate to use in hybrid vehicles, you might be surprised to learn that the first automobile was an electric one. Between 1832 and 1838, Robert Anderson of Scotland invented a crude electric carriage, the first car the world had ever seen.
By the turn of the century, when Henry Ford was looking for the right vehicle to set up for mass production, his first successful models were also electric. It is not difficult to build an electric vehicle; they have been around for nearly 200 years. What is difficult is to build an electric vehicle for mass production that achieves the speed people expect from a gas powered car and has a range great enough to get an ordinary commuter through a normal day. Even those difficulties have been overcome however, as GM’s now defunct EV1 and Canada’s Zenn car (alive and well) prove.
Tags: Electric, electric carriage, electric cars