RARE HISTORICAL PHOTOS • October 4, 2021
Early electric cars found a lucrative market for driving around cities. Rechargeable batteries that provided a viable means for storing electricity on board a vehicle came into being in 1859. The first human-carrying electric vehicle with its own power source was tested along a Paris street in 1881. The first electric car in the United States was developed in 1890-91 by William Morrison of Iowa; the vehicle was a six-passenger wagon capable of reaching a speed of 14 mph. In 1895, consumers began to devote attention to electric vehicles, after A.L. Ryker introduced the first electric tricycles to the U.S., by which point Europeans had been making use of electric tricycles, bicycles, and cars for almost 15 years.