Cars

It is only a question of a short time carriages and trucks in every large city will be run on motors." Thomas Edison seemed to predict the future. Even so, in 1904 one-third of all the cars in New York City, Chicago, and Boston were electrically powered. By 1912, there were 20,000 electric cars and 10,000 electric busses and trucks were on the road in the United States. Only a handful of manufactures, notably Baker and Detroit Electric, made it into the 1930's. Former President Woodrow Wilson owned one of the most elegant cars of the period, a 1918 Milburn Electric. In the 1960's and 1970's a handful of electric car manufactures started to reappear because of the increasing concern about air pollution and a depleting supplies of petroleum. In the late 1970's and 1980's, manufactures started developing electric cars called hybrids. These cars have all the components of the electric cars plus an internal-combustion engine. In the late 1980's, one of the most e technologically advanced electric cars was the Sunraycer, developed by General Motors Corporation. This experimental car used solar energy to recharge its batteries. More recently, in 1996, General Motors Corporation announced the first modern, mass-produced car designed specifically as an electric car. Also in 1996, the Honda Motor Company introduced another electric car, the first with nickel-metal hydride batteries, for sale in the United States. Italian automaker, Fiat, announced it will begin making vehicles with a new, standard-sized battery based on a European standard in 1996. Technological Concepts: An electric car has a battery and a controller, connected to the accelerator pedal, for directing the flow of electricity between the battery and motor. Most electric cars use lead-acid batteries, but new types of batteries, including zinc-chlorine, nickel metal hydride, and sodium-sulfur, are in the works. The motor of an electric car harnesses the battery's electrical energy by converting it to kinetic energy.