In 1838, a Scotsman named Robert Davidson built an electric locomotive that attained a speed of four miles per hour (6 km/h). American blacksmith and inventor Thomas Davenport built a toy electric locomotive, powered by a primitive electric motor, in 1835. In 1835, professor Sibrandus Stratingh of the University of Groningen, in the Netherlands, built a small-scale electric car, and sometime between 18, Robert Anderson of Scotland invented the first crude electric carriage, powered by non-rechargeable primary cells. Main article: History of the electric vehicleĮlectric motive power started in 1827 when Hungarian priest Ányos Jedlik built the first crude but viable electric motor, which used a stator, rotor, and commutator the next year he used it to power a small car. The same report noted that 666,479 buses were sold, with 38% of the market (these are higher priced vehicles, so actual numbers are lower than the percentage of sales), 26,583,856 passenger cars at 14% of sales, and 965,442 vans and trucks with 3% of sales. Bloomberg reports that in 2023, 292,423,403 bicycles and tricycles sold, representing 49% of the total market. At more than 20%, two/three-wheelers are already the most electrified road transport segment today, and are projected to continue being the largest EV fleet among all transport modes. Much of this growth is expected in markets like North America, Europe, and China a 2020 literature review suggested that growth in the use of four-wheeled electric vehicles appears economically unlikely in developing economies, but growth in electric two-wheeler and three-wheeler is likely. As of July 2022 the global EV market size was $280 billion and was expected to grow to $1 trillion by 2026. Electric vehicle sales may increase from 1% of the global share in 2016 to more than 35% by 2030. A total of 14% of all new cars sold were electric in 2022, up from 9% in 2021 and less than 5% in 2020. The International Energy Agency has stated that governments should do more to meet climate goals, including policies for heavy electric vehicles. During the COVID-19 pandemic, lockdowns reduced the number of greenhouse gases in gasoline or diesel vehicles.

Increasing public interest and awareness and structural incentives, such as those being built into the green recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, are expected to greatly increase the electric vehicle market. Government incentives to increase adoption were first introduced by Norway in 1990, followed by larger markets in the 2000s, including in the United States and the European Union, leading to a growing market for vehicles in the 2010s. Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, where electric motors can be used as the predominant propulsion rather than a supplement, did not see any mass production until the late 2000s, and battery electric cars did not become practical options for the consumer market until the 2010s. Hybrid electric vehicles, where electric motors are used as a supplementary propulsion to internal combustion engines, became more widespread in the late 1990s. Internal combustion engines (both gasoline and diesel engines) were the dominant propulsion mechanisms for cars and trucks for about 100 years, but electricity-powered locomotion remained commonplace in other vehicle types, such as overhead line-powered mass transit vehicles like electric trains, trams, monorails and trolley buses, as well as various small, low-speed, short-range battery-powered personal vehicles such as mobility scooters. Using electricity was among the preferred methods for motor vehicle propulsion as it provides a level of quietness, comfort and ease of operation that could not be achieved by the gasoline engine cars of the time, but range anxiety due to the limited energy storage offered by contemporary battery technologies hindered any mass adoption of private electric vehicles throughout the 20th century. Įarly electric vehicles first came into existence in the late 19th century, when the Second Industrial Revolution brought forth electrification. Together with other emerging automotive technologies such as autonomous driving, connected vehicles and shared mobility, EVs form a future vision of transportation called Connected, Autonomous, Shared and Electric (CASE) mobility.

Electric boat, the Tûranor PlanetSolar, the first solar-powered boat to circumnavigate the worldĮlectric road vehicles include electric passenger cars, electric buses, electric trucks and personal transporters such as electric buggy, electric tricycles, electric bicycles and electric motorcycles/scooters.

Electric truck, Class 8, a Tesla Semi in Rocklin, California.

Battery electric bus, a BYD bus in Landskrona, Sweden.

Electric tram, a Wiener Linien ULF-B in Vienna, Austria.

Electric aircraft, the Solar Impulse 2, which circumnavigated the globe.Electric vehicles around the world (left to right, from top):

Construction simulator 2012 vehicles