Today electric cars are becoming more and more common, and more car companies are making electric cars. What most people don’t know is that electric cars have actually been around for a long time, and by a long time I mean the late 1800s. The invention of the electric car doesn’t go to just one person or country because there were so many people making them. At the time, the horse was still the main means of transportation and people were making all kinds of cars, the first car powered by gas was made in 1885-1886. In the late 1800s and early 1900s many car manufactures were trying to make electric cars, Ferdinand Porsche made the first hybrid and Henry Ford was working with Thomas Edison to try and make a lower costing electric car. Around 1900 cars in general were becoming more popular, and the electric vehicle had many advantages over gas and steam powered vehicles they were quiet and easy to start. At the time electric cars made up about a third of all cars, granted the number of cars on the road didn’t reached 1 million till 1913, and with more people getting electricity in their homes it was easier for people to charge them. However, in 1908 Henry Ford started production of the Model T, and because of his assembly line production, he was able to make a lot of them. The Model T was more affordable, reliable, and by 1918 it made up about half of the cars on the road. The gas motors were able to produce more power and were more affordable, and electric cars became less and less common.
Today the percentage of electric car on the road is around 1-2 percent, but a simple google search will bring up tons of articles about how the number of electric cars is predicted to grow in the future. It is more common when traveling to see designated parking spots for electric cars to charge. Most electric cars have a range of around 100 miles that they can drive before having to be recharged which doesn’t sound like that much, but you can just plug in the car every night to charge. Teslas have a much higher range: the Model S, Model X, and Model 3 are all around 300 miles and the Roadster has a range of 620 miles. The motors are a lot smaller, and the only touching parts are bearings, so there is less wear and tear, and less needed maintenance. However, to get the power and range, Tesla cars have a battery that weighs about 1,200 pounds. Also, when the motors are not using energy to push the car forward, but the car still moving, such as driving down a hill, the rotation of the wheels is used to charge the battery. Much like an alternator charges the battery on gas cars. As green and clean as electric cars are, they are still not 100% green because of the production process. The cars still need to be produced the same as gas powered cars, but driving electric cars around produces much less CO2 than gas cars.
Written By: Josh Malcom
Sources:
- First electric car and why they didn’t become more popular https://www.energy.gov/articles/history-electric-car
- Electric cars video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ONdsVs6yS0
- First car https://www.daimler.com/company/tradition/company-history/1885-1886.html
- Percentage of electric cars https://cleantechnica.com/2018/07/01/please-stop-saying-evs-are-only-1-of-auto-sales-in-the-us/
- Number of cars on the road https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/summary95/mv200.pdf
- Model T https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Model_T
- https://www.tesla.com
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