K. Starley, an English inventor and Fred M. Kimball of Boston, Massachusetts with building the first practical electric car in 1888. Woods Motor Vehicle Company located in Chicago become the first American Producer in 1896. At one time, around 1904 one third of all the cars in New York City, Chicago and Boston were electrically powered. By 1912 thirty thousand electric vehicles roamed the United States. These cars are starting to surface again in anticipation of regulations designed to reduce air pollution emission in some states. Many breakthroughs have been made in this field but some designs have stayed similar. An electric car has a battery, a charger for replenishing the battery's power and a controller, which directs the flow of electricity between the battery and the motor. Lead Acid batteries are the most commonly used battery in the new fleet of EV's arriving, but there are new types of batteries including nickel-metal hydride, zinc-chlorine and sodium-sulfur. Today's electric cars come standard with regenerative breaking. Regenerative breaking is where the braking system recharges the battery. The motor acts as a generator when stopping and converts the energy caused by the movement of the vehicle back into electricity and stores it in the battery.Converting the kinetic energy into electric energy slows the car.? (Encarta, 1999) GM has come through with a breakthrough design. The second generation of their EV. It has no engine because it doesn't need one. No tailpipe because it has no exhaust. It has no valves, no pistons, no timing belts or crankshaft. The EV is a zero emission vehicle. Therefore it requires no emissions testing. It requires no tune-ups; no gasoline or oil changes either. The EV seems childish because it is so simplistic; but in actually it is one of the most complex pieces of machinery on the road today. The GM EV uses a 26 valve- regulated high capacity lead-acid (PbA) battery.