Electric vehicles are older than what's become the modern internal combustion engine standard model,

having initially arrived in the first half of the 19th century,

around the same time as early electric motors,

which were the first means of converting electrical energy into mechanical energy,

allowing electricity to make things move rather than just shocking people,

making things glow, and sometimes setting stuff on fire.

We didn't get something approximating the eventual modern iteration of an electric vehicle until later that century,

when in 1859, the lead acid battery was invented, which allowed for the recharging of an electricity storing piece of

hardware, rather than just the one-off use of something that then had to be replaced.

So this is what made an electric vehicle feasible over time, the battery capable of being

refilled with energy, rather than serving as a one-time-then-it-done sort of novelty.

The lead-acid battery was massively improved upon in 1881, and these improvements

allowed each battery to store far more electricity than previous iterations, and this in turn

is what led to the mass production of these batteries.

Earlier versions just weren't useful enough to justify production on scale.

From that point forward, even that same year, inventors around the world, and especially in Europe,

where much of this battery development was taking place, would strap these batteries and they're accompanying electric motors to all sorts of things,

from carriages to tricycles to boats. Consequently, the first real-deal electric vehicle

with its own power source, the first outboard motor, and the first battery-powered rail car

all arrived around the same time, between 1881 and 1887.

For a long while after that, electric vehicles of all kinds and at all scales were used for work purposes,

like pulling rail cars filled with coal from mines, and for traveling decent distances relatively

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