The Electric Stars
There was a time when more electric cars drove on the
roads than there were cars powered by fossil fuels. In 1900,
electric motors powered 34 percent of the cars in New
York, Boston, and Chicago. A steam or a combustion engine
powered the other cars.^385
Manufactured in the late 1800s, the first electric cars
were quiet, clean, and could be charged in the home.^59 The
torpedo shaped electric car,The Never Satisfied, was the
first vehicle to reach a speed over 62 mph [100 km/h]. Those
who saw the record thought they were going to die if they
traveled so fast. While Henry Ford mass produced gasoline
cars, his wife Clara Ford drove a 1914 Detroit Electric with
a range of 80 miles [130 km] and a speed of 20 mph [32
km/h].^218
Around 1920, the gasoline cars began to outnumber
the electric because they were easier to refuel. In most
smaller towns in America, the gasoline car arrived before
electricity. The gasoline car was also less expensive. You
could buy three of Ford’s Model T for the price of just
one electric car.59,329Several car manufacturers have since
then again and again tried to sell electric cars. But all
models failed. They didn’t always fail because the cars were
expensive, slow, ugly, or had a limited range – they could
also fail because the auto manufacturers wanted them to
fail. The best example is General Motors’s EV1.