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How was the first electric car made?
Electric cars still seem to be fairly new to the mainstream marketplace, but how long has electric car technology actually been around? How was the first electric car made?
Allison Stone · Updated on
Reviewed by Shannon Martin, Licensed Insurance Agent.
Interestingly enough,
electric cars
have been around just as long as gas-powered cars. In fact, electric vehicles have been around for so long in one form or another that it’s hard to pinpoint their origin to one inventor or country. The eventual creation of electric cars can be credited to two technological breakthroughs in the 1800s: the invention of the battery and electric motor. In the early 1800s in Hungary, the Netherlands, and the United States, innovators started making some of the first small-scale electric cars.
The first-ever electric vehicles could only travel a few miles at a time, and their batteries were not yet rechargeable. It wasn’t until 1859 that rechargeable batteries were invented, making the prospect of the electric car more realistic.
In the late 1980s, a chemist in Des Moines, Iowa, William Morrison, applied for a patent for an electric carriage that he had built. The carriage had 4 horsepower, a top speed of 24 mph, and 24 battery cells that needed to be recharged every 50 miles.
If you’re thinking about buying an electric car, find out if you could be saving money on your car insurance plan with
Jerry
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car insurance
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