Everywhere I look it’s just Tesla, Tesla, Tesla. I’m wondering about what the EV landscape was like before Elon Musk came on the scene. Who made electric cars before Tesla did?

Alex Reale · Updated on Oct 11, 2022

Reviewed by Shannon Martin, Licensed Insurance Agent.

Great question. Though it does feel like a few prominent EV companies (cough, Tesla) have sucked up all the EV oxygen in the room, in fact plenty of companies made electric cars before Tesla did. Here’s a (very) brief timeline of the electric car landscape, culled from

Car and Driver

’s exhaustive history.

1800s: A few motorized carriages gave way to William Morrison’s 1893 Chicago World’s Fair sensation, the first official electric car.

Late 1800s-early 1900s: EVs gingerly go commercial with Morris and Salom’s “Electrobat,” which lent its technology to a fleet of New York taxis. Plus, Belgian builder and racer Camille Jenatzy breaks 60 miles per hour in his electric “torpedo-shaped machine,” La Jamais Contente.

Honorable mention in the 1800s: Oldsmobile and Porsche predecessors, plus a car contribution from the one and only Thomas Edison

1900s: President McKinley gets a ride in an electric ambulance, Detroit Electric sees some success in the face of a mushrooming combustion appetite, many companies go gasoline or pivot to smaller markets.

Mid-1900s: Henney Kilowatt produces a 40 miles-at-40 mph electric car in 1959, then a 60-at-60 in 1960. General Motors gets crazy and builds the crushingly expensive Electrovair II, which went up to 80 mph and could reach 80 miles…but the battery alone would have cost buyers the equivalent of $1.5 million. Definitely a no-go. General Electric gets in on the act in 1965, producing an electric car called Delta, and Ford is quick to follow up with its own proto-EV, but batteries are still not up to snuff.

1970s: A brief lunar interlude. The LRV meets the moon on the Apollo 15 mission. An oil embargo introduces some very ugly EVs into the market, among them the Citicar and the Comuta-Car. GM tries out the Chevette and the Electrovette.

1990s: Finally, real progress for the common folk. We see the Toyota RAV4 EV and GM’s EV1. And a sports car called Tzero lays the groundwork for modern-day Tesla.

Early 2000s: Tesla makes its debut with the Roadster. The Toyota Prius starts on its journey to iconhood. The

Chevy Spark EV

and Nissan Leaf start to find their niche. Many EV startups fail as the tide turns.

2010s-present day: Hello Rivian, Lucid, Fisker, VinFast, and every other EV startup who dared to dream. And don’t forget the electric supercars.

We’ve come a long way, baby.

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