Times Five Electric vehicles may feel like a relatively new thing but they’ve been around for more than a hundred years. Nile Bijoux looks at some that helped put EVs where they are today.

Nissan Leaf

Until last year the Nissan Leaf was the best-selling electric vehicle of all time. And for good reason – it’s inexpensive, safe and as capable as any other small hatchback. Nissan has offered it since 2010 and thousands have made it into New Zealand over the years as official and grey imports, making it the most popular second-hand EV by far. First-generation models had batteries good enough for up to 175km of range and the second generation pushed that figure up to 364km.

Tesla Roadster

Tesla’s first vehicle produced under Elon Musk’s stewardship was the first-generation Roadster in 2008. Essentially a repurposed Lotus Elise, the Roadster was the first highway legal serial production allelectric car to use lithium-ion battery cells and travel more than 320 kilometres per charge. It also helped show people that EVs don’t have to be eco-friendly commuters. Boasting a 0-100kmh time of

3.7 seconds in Sport guise, it was faster than most supercars of its time in a straight line.

Detroit Electric

This was one of the very first massproduction EVs. The Detroit Electric was produced by the Anderson Electric Car Company from 1907 to 1939, even surviving the Great Depression. Anderson built 13,000 of the Detroit Electric, no small feat for the early-20th century. The car itself was pretty decent too. It was advertised as being able to reliably run for around 130km but one test managed an astounding 340km on a single charge. That’s impressive for today, let alone 100 years ago! Plus, Thomas Edison had one.

Thomas Parker’s car

Thomas Parker didn’t exactly build cars, but he was good at building batteries. He improved lead acid batteries in the late 1800s, and was putting them in horse-drawn carriages sans horse before the turn of the century. Little is known about the car itself but there were models that had hydraulic brakes and even four-wheel steering. As for speed, according to the law at the time, it could only drive a maximum of four miles per hour on country roads and two on urban roads.

General Motors EV1

The General Motors EV1 was built from 1996 to 1999 – the first massproduced and purpose-designed electric vehicle of the modern era. EV1, spawned from a 1990 concept car called Impact, was available only through lease agreements. Despite positive customer reactions, GM believed electric cars were unprofitable. It forced the return of most EV1s and destroyed them. Only about 40 of the 1157 units built weren’t crushed, making an intact and running EV1 one of the rarest cars of the 1990s.