The Electric Car Is Older Than the Petrol Car. What Happened?

Here is a surprise: the electric car is older than the petrol car’s dominance, not newer. Electric vehicles ran on city streets before 1900, held speed records, and sold in large numbers. Then they almost vanished for nearly a century. This guide explains why they lost, why they came back, how an electric drivetrain actually works, and what it all means in India, where the most common electric vehicles are scooters and three-wheelers.

The first electric vehicles

The first electric vehicles arrived decades before the first successful petrol car. In the 1830s inventors in Scotland, the Netherlands and the United States built small electric carriages powered by non-rechargeable batteries. They were curiosities. Everything changed when the lead-acid battery, which can be recharged, matured in the second half of the 19th century.

By the 1890s electric cars were quiet, clean and easy to start, a real advantage over the noisy, smelly, hand-cranked petrol cars of the time. In 1899, a Belgian driver, Camille Jenatzy, set a land speed record above 100 kilometres per hour in an electric car with a torpedo-shaped body called La Jamais Contente (Never Satisfied). In the United States in 1900, electric cars made up a large share of production, rivalling steam and petrol.

Why petrol won

Electric cars had one big weakness: range. Batteries were heavy, slow to charge and held little energy. Petrol, by contrast, packs a huge amount of energy into a small, light tank that can be refilled in minutes. Several events then tipped the balance toward petrol:

• Cheap fuel. New oil discoveries, such as Texas in 1901, made petrol inexpensive.
• Mass production. Henry Ford’s Model T, introduced in 1908 and produced on assembly lines, made petrol cars affordable for ordinary families.
• The electric starter. Charles Kettering’s starter, fitted to Cadillacs in 1912, removed the dangerous hand crank, which had been a major advantage for electric cars among drivers.
• Roads and distance. As roads improved, people wanted to travel beyond the reach of a battery.

How an electric car works

Try it: running-cost calculator

Electric cars cost more to buy in many places but less to run. Enter your own numbers to see the difference. The defaults are illustrative figures, so replace them with your own fuel price and electricity tariff.

The same calculation in Python

km_per_month = 40 * 30

petrol_cost = km_per_month / 15 * 100     # 15 km/litre, Rs 100 per litre
ev_cost = km_per_month / 6 * 8            # 6 km/kWh, Rs 8 per kWh

print(f"Petrol: Rs {petrol_cost:,.0f} per month")
print(f"Electric: Rs {ev_cost:,.0f} per month")
print(f"Saving: Rs {petrol_cost - ev_cost:,.0f} per month")

Output:

Petrol: Rs 8,000 per month
Electric: Rs 1,600 per month
Saving: Rs 6,400 per month

Public fast chargers usually cost more per kWh than home charging, so the real saving depends on where you charge. And you must weigh running costs against the higher purchase price and battery lifetime.

The comeback

The revival depended on batteries. Lithium-ion cells, developed from work by Whittingham, Goodenough and Yoshino and first sold commercially by Sony in 1991, store far more energy for their weight than lead-acid batteries. As they were produced in huge numbers for phones and laptops, their prices fell, and carmakers began to use them. The same trend is visible in our guide to the solar cell: as costs fall, new markets open.

Electric vehicles in India

India’s electric story looks different from the West. Most electric vehicles on Indian roads are two-wheelers and three-wheelers, such as scooters and e-rickshaws, which need smaller, cheaper batteries. Early electric cars included the Reva, built in Bangalore from 2001. Tata Motors launched the Nexon EV in 2020, and the government has supported the shift with incentive schemes: FAME (Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of Electric Vehicles) from 2015, a second phase from 2019, and the PM E-DRIVE scheme from 2024.

Challenges include charging infrastructure, battery costs and the electricity mix, which still relies heavily on coal. Studies generally find that an electric vehicle emits less over its lifetime than a petrol one even on a coal-heavy grid, but the advantage grows as the grid gets cleaner. India is also working on domestic battery manufacturing to reduce dependence on imports.

Mind map: the electric car at a glance

Common myths

• Myth: Electric cars are a new invention. They date to the 1830s and were popular around 1900.
• Myth: Electric cars have no emissions at all. They produce no exhaust, but making batteries and generating electricity create emissions.
• Myth: Batteries die within a few years. Modern packs are designed to last many years, and makers typically offer long warranties.
• Myth: EVs are slow. Electric motors deliver torque instantly, so many accelerate quickly.

Frequently asked questions

Keep exploring

Sources

• Electric car, Encyclopaedia Britannica
• Automobile: early electric automobiles, Encyclopaedia Britannica
• The History of the Electric Car, U.S. Department of Energy
• The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2019, Nobel Prize Outreach
• Ministry of Heavy Industries, Government of India

Featured image: Image: Unknown authorUnknown author, via Wikimedia Commons, Public domain. Prices and efficiency figures in the calculator are illustrative.