What was the first electric car in history?

International Electric Car Day is celebrated around the world on September 9. initiative started in 2020 thanks to the companies ABB and Green TV with the aim of raising awareness and promoting electromobility.

International Electric Car Day was then seen as an example serves to reflect on the integration of renewable energies and the role they must play in strengthening a sustainable transport ecosystem, in a world on the brink of climate collapse.

In this context, plug-in vehicles have been installed in recent years as the great solution to all the ills caused by combustion cars, but the truth is that the origin of electric cars not related to climate change but with a development of mobility for a long time.

When did the first electric vehicles appear? For that, we’ll have to hop on a DeLorean with a flux capacitor—hopefully it runs on clean power—and go back several decades.

The story goes that between 1832 and 1839 – there is no consensus among historians – there is the first trace of a vehicle capable of moving thanks to electric power. It was long before the appearance of the first automobile, the 1886 Benz Patent Motorwagen.

On that date, when the world was making great strides in its development through the industrial revolution the Scotsman Robert Anderson improved some prototypes of the inventors Ányos Jedlik and Thomas Davenport and presented a cart that was not very far from those that were used at that time, but which had a substantial difference: it did not need animal traction to get around. .

How did he do that? thanks to a small electric motor powered by a battery, not rechargeable, but which allowed it to reach a speed of 6 km/h.

This step was essential in the development of these devices capable of storing energy and served as an inspiration for a process which then served in the work of Dutch professor Sibrandus Stratingh, who built electric vehicles on a reduced scale, although the qualitative leap was experienced with the work of the French Gaston Planté and Camille Faure, who improved the electric battery and developed the first energy accumulator, an essential pillar to be able to have electricity.

The rise of the electric theme has not stopped. In 1867, the Austrian Franz Kravogl presented a kind of two-wheeled bicycle with an electric motor at the Universal Exhibition in France and years later, at the International Exhibition of Electricity on April 19, 1881, the French Gustave Found presented a three-wheeled vehicle, which is considered the first electric car in history.

It was a tricycle that had a sort of rudder to steer two of its three fine wheels , in addition to a brake consisting of a leather strap, a high seat that installed the person at the height of the shoulders of the rest and as the main novelty, it mounted a small electric motor and a battery that allowed it to move. His first public walk was on rue de Valois in the city of light.

On the 140th anniversary of this milestone, historian and curator of the British Motor Museum in Gaydon, Catherine Griffin, said in an interview about the Found vehicle that “it’s really interesting to look at the history of electric vehicles and understand that, as we see them now, this is not modern technology.

Along the same lines, the British expert said that “in the 19th century, electric propulsion was widely adopted and had exactly the same advantages as today. It was cleaner and quieter . Those who have not adopted it have done so for the same reasons as today: its autonomy and its reliability”.

The years passed and the electric power began to be part of mobility . And if the cars already belonged to the wealthy classes, these new vehicles were even more exclusive and reserved for a small elite, which is not very far from what is happening today.

In this context, electric vehicles were developing with some very striking cases. One of the most interesting was the experience of the Austrian Jacob Lohner during a trip to the United States.

In the 1890s, the car manufacturer envisioned a change in mobility. In North America, he discovers the progress of electromobility and on his return to Europe, the idea of ​​converting his company comes to his eyes. For this, he asked a young engineer who worked in Vienna, named Ferdinand Porsche to help him create an electric car.

One of the reasons Lohner turned to electric vehicles was that many of his customers were not comfortable with the smoke, smell or noise of these early gasoline-powered cars. internal combustion.

This is how Ferdinand Porsche appeared in 1898 with the Egger-Lohner P1 , perhaps the earliest ancestor of the Porsche Taycan family tree. This model was capable of reaching 34 km/h with a range of almost 80 km on a single charge.

The P1 is a total success and marks the beginning of a series of collaborations between Ferdinand Porsche and Lohner.

with circumstances as described above, the growth of the electric car was understood, which has aroused more and more interest among the population.

Thus in 1899, the Belgian pilot Camille Jenatzy seized an electric car to break a speed record. The runner, nicknamed “the Red Devil” for his colorful beard, took the vehicle “The Never Contented” and reached a speed of 105 km / h. Was the exceeding 100 km/h for the first time and this was done in a torpedo-shaped vehicle, made of light alloy and moved by electric power. This vehicle is currently in the automobile museum in Compiègne, France.

The new century has begun then to the growth of electric cars and the United States was fertile territory for its expansion, as the Austrian Lohner had seen. Without going any further, the data indicates that in 1900, 4,192 cars were manufactured in the United States, of which 28% were electric.

Moreover, in certain large cities, such as New York, Boston or Chicago, the electric cars accounted for more than a third. As an example of this boom, the New York taxi fleet was mainly made up of electric cars and there were public totems to charge these cars, where you could even choose the intensity of the charge (from 25 at 80 A), as well as today. in some electrolineras.

In the land of Uncle Sam, the leader in the automobile market was the Fritchle company, founded by Oliver O. Frichthle, a chemist living in Denver.

According to chronicles of the history of electric cars, Fritchle sold its first car in 1906. Two years later, the company opened its first store in Denver and the the way to grow the business was advertising promising that his car was able to travel up to 160 km on a flat surface after charging the battery overnight (similar to what we see today with some electric cars).

Many thought it was a commercial device and it was not true , so he had to check it and for that he made a road trip clearly showing that the slogan was real. And after that, reservations for the so-called “One Hundred Mile Fritchle” started rolling in.

The success of the pharmacist was such that in 1912 he opened a new store, today on Fifth Avenue in New York. The problem was that their vehicles were very expensive (a new similarity to the present) compared to the Ford internal combustion engine, which in those years years ago it was priced around 14,000 current dollars . Fritchle’s car, meanwhile, now cost the equivalent of about $105,000.

It is precisely the birth of the Ford T and the assembly line, which it could reduce the cost of the car with a combustion engine and not even the iron-nickel battery invented by Edison in 1910, that was enough to reverse what seemed like a definite decline in electromobility, especially since it was easier to refuel in minutes and at a cheaper price.

That The need for rapid mobility increased with the First World War, to which was added later the discovery of oil in Texas, which further lowered the price of fuel. Thus the electric car set off again in its silence.

Then came decades in which occasional bets appeared on the market, but without creating a trend or pattern. Rather, they were experimental works that were not intended to reach users.

Even the oil crisis of the 1970s did not cause change paradigm like the one lived today and it wasn’t until the 1990s that a manufacturer returned to take the issue relatively seriously.

General Motors was the first major manufacturer to dare an electric car, the EV1. Of course, this was a project that only people in California, Arizona and Georgia could join and through a Saturn dealership.

Manufacturing of the GM EV1 began in 1996 and just over 1,100 units hit the streets until 2003 when it was decided to end the program.

The EV1 is for many the precursor of the whole current trend. He was born when the environmental question began to be heard in California a state that established in 1990 the ZEV (Zero Emission Vehicle), a standard that aimed that by 1998, 2% of sales in California correspond to zero-emission cars until reaching a quota of 10% in 2003 .

It clearly didn’t last and the few surviving units of the EV1 ended up in museums, even though its seeds are fueling the automotive industry’s grand challenge today, transform the energy matrix of the vehicle fleet and in honor of this goal, International Electric Car Day is celebrated on September 9.