Article Preview
TopA Brief History Of Electric Vehicles
In its simplest definition, an electric motor changes electrical energy into mechanical energy. Such an electric motor was first invented by an English scientist named as Michael Faraday. The latter is credited with inventing the first ever electric motor in 1821, when he converted electrical energy into mechanical energy in an electromagnetic field. Later in Europe, during the year 1832, the first commercially manufactured electric motor was invented by a British inventor named as William Sturgeon (Cooper, 2015, p. 89). Subsequently in 1849, Thomas Davenport built the first direct current (DC) motor that was able to rotate the other way around upon the change of polarity. However, the Volkswagen Group argued that in 1821, Thomas Davenport used its electric motor and built the first electric car having a non-rechargeable battery with a travelling range of 15 to 30 km (Basics of Electric Vehicles: Design and Function, 2013, p. 2). Afterwards, in 1881 Gustave Trouvé built the first rechargeable tricycle in Paris having a speed of 12 km/h. The next year in 1882 Ernst Werner built electrically driven carriage known as Electro-Motte (Basics of Electric Vehicles: Design and Function, 2013). Following the end of the nineteenth century in 1887, a Yugoslavian scientist and inventor named as Nikola Tesla invented the first ever induction motor and received a patent in 1888.1 Basically it was built on the principle set forward by Michael Faraday. This motor was advantageous since it did not have brushes used in previous models of electric motors. Nikola Tesla was also the inventor of alternate current (AC) (Cooper, 2015, p. 88). With such inventions and enthusiasm in the fields of electrical and electronics, Tesla gained enduring fame and recognition.
Figure 1.
A portrait of Nikola Tesla (Hunt, 2021)
In contemporary times, induction motors are used in abundance in industry and factories and almost 65 percent of electricity in Germany and United States is used by induction motors. The electric motors apart from their role in the economy of the world have a vital role in the environment of the planet earth. According to an estimate, almost 45 percent of all the electric power in the world is used and consumed by the electric motors (Cooper, 2015). It was noted that “If electric motors got first dibs every year on all of the electricity produced anywhere; the world would have to wait until June 16th before anyone could plug in anything else” (Cooper, 2015). At the beginning of the Twentieth century, Thomas Edison was interested in electric vehicles; however, electric charge storing batteries caught his attention more. During that time, Henry Ford was the one who started the production line of his hydrocarbon-driven Ford Model T in 1908, and significantly put an end to electric vehicles. The internal combustion engine (ICE) revolutionized the very concept of vehicles. It was the beginning of an entity that one day became a huge industry. Although, it took almost 101 years from the invention of ICE in 1807 to its use in industrially produced vehicles in 1908, but apparently the internal combustion engine-equipped vehicles dominated the automotive industry and left an indelible mark for the scores of years to come (Lemon & Miller, 2013).