It is fair to say that electric vehicles are in a pivotal moment in their history, one that looks set to see them break through and with the help of excellent battery raw material suppliers take over from fossil fuel cars by the middle of the century.
It has been a long and exceptionally fraught road to this destination filled with technological roadblocks, political machinations and several instances of outright fraud, one of which looked like it was set to kill the electric car dream for good.
Since 2009, EVs have evolved into the form we see today, not just a car designed to travel around cities and urban landscapes but an entire ecosystem suitable for almost every type of driver powered using a fuel that costs a tiny fraction of petrol’s cost and without the considerable carbon cost.
However, there is a sense that this could have all happened a really long time ago. Long before the EV1 in 1996, before the small electric cars of the 1970s or the prototypical designs of the 1960s.
In fact, there could have been an EV revolution at the turn of the 20th century, led by one of the most prolific, celebrated and controversial inventors of all time.
Unfortunately, time is what Thomas Edison ran out of.
Edison Vs Ford
Thomas Edison famously had over 1000 patents and would help to devise a lot of the infrastructure that helped electrify the United States and other parts of the world even if, it must be noted, there is some controversy surrounding whether he was the true inventor of certain technologies.
He was naturally heavily invested in electricity and believed that it could be a power source for cars as early as 1889.
Whilst not the first EV ever made, with Gustave Trouve in 1881, Thomas Parker in 1884 and Andreas Flocken in 1888 all having a claim to that accolade, it was a statement of purpose from the most famous man in the early electrical space.
He largely parked the idea in favour of other inventions, even encouraging a 33-year-old Chief Engineer by the name of Henry Ford to keep working on his petrol-powered Quadricycle prototype, but returned to the idea of an electric car whilst working on a revolution in battery technology.
At the time, the main battery type was lead-acid, which is still used in cars today to power ignition systems, radios and interior lights. It worked reliably but was extremely heavy relative to the power it could provide, meaning that any car which used it as a power source would be exceedingly heavy.
Mr Edison thought he had solved the issue with nickel-iron alkaline batteries, although it took far longer than he thought for it to come to market in a form that would make it a viable fuel source for electric cars.
That did not stop him from selling people on the concept with the typical bluster you’d expect from the Wizard of Menlo Park. He denounced the confusing, noisy and vibrating nature of early petrol cars that were famously extremely difficult to drive in an era with starting handles and byzantine combinations of levers and pedals.
He boldly announced his plans to use his own NiFe batteries to power touring cars and showcase the lengthy journeys they can go on. He claimed ranges of over 100 miles would be possible, turning the EV from an inner city taxi to something everyone could use.
He actually managed to live up to these expectations, famously driving one of his own cars from Scotland to London, including a 170-mile leg without stopping.
However, this power came far too late and at too high a cost. By the time the NiFe battery had a high enough energy density in 1909, the Ford Model T had been out for a year.
Whilst much has already been said about the Model T and how it made cars affordable for everyone, creating motoring culture and setting the course of the car for the next century, it was not necessarily the end of the electric car.
Mr Edison and Mr Ford were good friends, and whilst the younger engineer had clearly won in this instance, the pair did work together on a low-cost electric car in the 1910s, designed with the NiFe batteries in mind.
Despite considerable hype surrounding the collaboration, by 1915 the project was dead, allegedly the result of Mr Edison swapping out the temperamental NiFe batteries for lead-acid without telling Mr Ford, a decision that reportedly infuriated him.
Sadly, this means that the potential future of electric cars was delayed for an entire century.