Electric Cars: An idea whose time has come, gone and then come back again.

 

A 2006 movie asked the controversial question "Who Killed the Electric Car?" Framed as a "whodunit," the movie not-so-gingerly suggested that it was the major U.S. auto companies that neglected, if not outright killed, electric cars in the 1990s when the companies could have instead been developing them. What many people don't realize is that electric cars actually have a very long history. Various inventors labored to create crude electric conveyances through the middle part of the 1800s. The first electric-powered car was built in Iowa by William Morrison in 1891, and electric vehicles began to flourish shortly thereafter. Their downward slide in the marketplace began when Henry Ford introduced the gasoline-powered Model T in 1908. That was followed by the introduction of Charles Kettering's electric-start motor for gasoline engines. This removed the danger and difficulty from starting an internal combustion engine by hand, thereby making gasoline-powered cars more attractive to buyers. Now of course, with talk of "peak oil" and worries about the effects of greenhouse gases, electrics have been staging a resurgence.