49 Fun Facts About Electric Vehicles

In 1900, which power source drove the largest share of American cars, ahead of both battery and petrol?

Steam led with about 40 per cent of American cars, with battery power close behind and petrol a distant third. Petrol pulled clear once Charles Kettering's 1912 self-starter did away with hand-cranking.

Which torpedo-shaped battery car, built by Belgian racer Camille Jenatzy, was the first road vehicle to pass 100 km/h?

La Jamais Contente, 'the never satisfied', hit 105.88 km/h in 1899, beating a 92.78 km/h record set only weeks earlier by a rival battery car, the Jeantaud.

The battery-powered Lunar Roving Vehicle was first driven on the Moon during which mission?

Apollo 15 carried the first rover in July 1971, making a battery car the first crewed vehicle ever driven on the Moon. Three rovers are still parked up there, one from each of the last three landings.

Thomas Edison's first car came from which Cleveland maker, whose battery runabouts sold from 1899?

Baker Motor Vehicle sold Edison his first car, and the inventor returned the favour by designing nickel-iron batteries for some later Bakers. The firm built battery cars in Cleveland from 1899 to 1914.

Which country's 2016 transport plan set a goal for every new car sold to be zero-emission by 2025?

Norway nearly hit the target early: battery-electric cars were 88.9 per cent of new-car sales in 2024, helped by purchase taxes that fall hardest on petrol and diesel models.

Which Chinese microcar, priced from US$4,200, was the world's second best-selling plug-in of 2020?

The Wuling Mini EV sold 119,255 units in its first six months at a base price of US$4,162, China's cheapest electric car, and owners made a craze of customising theirs.

Tesla's design chief shattered two 'unbreakable' Cybertruck windows on stage in 2019 by throwing what?

A steel ball thrown by Franz von Holzhausen cracked both windows at the November 2019 reveal; Musk blamed a sledgehammer blow to the door moments earlier for weakening the glass.

Which carmaker stopped building pure combustion cars in March 2022 and became China's best-selling brand in 2023?

BYD dropped pure petrol cars to build only plug-in hybrids and EVs, then overtook Volkswagen as China's best-selling car brand in 2023 and Tesla as the world's largest EV maker in 2025.

Which motorcycle maker, famous for V-twins, launched its first electric bike, the LiveWire, in 2019?

Harley-Davidson aimed the LiveWire at riders beyond its classic V-twin customers, then spun the name off as a separate all-electric brand that listed on the stock market in 2022.

Which tech giant's secret electric-car effort, codenamed Project Titan, ran from 2014 to 2024?

Apple never showed a car in public: Project Titan was shut down in February 2024 after a decade, and many of its 2,000 staff were moved to generative AI work.

Which vacuum-cleaner maker dropped its secret electric car in 2019 as not 'commercially viable'?

Dyson had 400 staff working on the car in secret by 2017, but James Dyson scrapped it in October 2019, telling employees he had failed to find a buyer for the project.

Which rental firm ordered 100,000 Teslas in 2021, then began dumping a third of its EV fleet in 2024?

Hertz called Tesla the only maker able to build EVs at scale in 2021, then in January 2024 blamed weak demand and high repair bills as it sold a third of its electric fleet and went back to petrol.

The Japanese fast-charging standard CHAdeMO takes its name from a pun on an invitation to do what?

Have a cup of tea: CHAdeMO stands for 'CHArge de MOve' but echoes the Japanese 'o cha demo ikaga desu ka', a joke about how long a charge takes.

The all-electric Formula E series held its first ever race in September 2014 in which capital city?

Beijing hosted the opener of a ten-city debut season that ended with two rounds in London, where the first title was decided by a single point.

Which 97-year-old became the oldest ever Nobel laureate with the 2019 lithium-ion battery prize?

John Goodenough shared the chemistry prize with Stanley Whittingham and Akira Yoshino; his 1980 cobalt-oxide cathode lifted a lithium cell from about two volts to four.

Which startup's R1T became the first modern all-electric pickup delivered to customers, in September 2021?

Rivian beat every legacy automaker and Tesla to market with the R1T; Amazon, an early investor, had agreed in 2019 to buy 100,000 of its electric delivery vans.

Which luxury sedan's Dream Edition earned a 520-mile EPA rating in 2021, the longest of any EV then on sale?

The Lucid Air's 520-mile figure was still the longest EPA range on the market in 2024; the company began life in 2007 as Atieva, a battery supplier founded by a former Tesla vice-president.

Since 2019, EU rules have made new electric car models do what below 20 km/h?

Emit a warning sound: a near-silent EV must hum from start-up to about 20 km/h so pedestrians can hear it coming, a rule extended to every new electric and hybrid car in July 2021.

Which Chinese city's entire fleet of more than 16,000 buses was running on batteries by January 2018?

Shenzhen's 16,359 battery buses made it the first city in the world with a fully electric fleet, a switch that leaned on national and local subsidies to close the price gap with diesel.

Which truck startup's promo showed a prototype rolling downhill by gravity, exposed as a sham in 2020?

Nikola's One truck had no working drivetrain; short-seller Hindenburg Research called the firm 'an intricate fraud' in September 2020 and founder Trevor Milton was later indicted.

Which was the first major automaker to commit its EVs to Tesla's NACS charging plug, in May 2023?

Ford said new EVs would get native NACS ports from 2025, with adapters for older cars from 2024; Tesla had opened its plug design to rivals in November 2022, and most major carmakers followed Ford within a year.

Which delivery vehicle let Britain claim more battery vehicles than the rest of the world combined in 1967?

Milk floats ran on batteries because they were quiet on early-morning rounds; the boast came from the UK Electric Vehicle Association in an August 1967 press release.

In which country did the priest Ányos Jedlik run a small model car on his own electric motor around 1828?

Hungary: Jedlik, a Benedictine teacher in Győr, drove the model with his new motor and a single-use battery, but he only reported the invention decades later.

Robert Anderson built a crude battery-powered carriage between 1832 and 1839 in which country?

Scotland's Robert Anderson worked before rechargeable batteries existed, so his carriage ran on single-use cells that had to be replaced once they were spent.

Andreas Flocken's 1888 Elektrowagen, an early electric car, came from which German town, Prince Albert's ancestral home?

Coburg's Maschinenfabrik A. Flocken added an electrical department in 1888 and built the four-wheeled car the same year, three years after Benz's petrol Motorwagen in Mannheim.

Which Vermont blacksmith's 1834 motor, America's first DC motor, drove a model car round a short track?

Thomas Davenport and his wife Emily built the motor from scratch, then won the first American patent on an electric machine in 1837; the little track car pointed the way to electric streetcars.

Gaston Planté's 1859 cell, the first rechargeable battery, survives under most car bonnets as which type?

Lead-acid: Planté's cell first made it practical to store electricity on board a vehicle, and its descendants still crank petrol engines as the humble 12-volt starter battery.

Morris and Salom, builders of the Electrobat, put electric hansom cabs on which city's streets in 1897?

New York got a dozen electric hansom cabs from the Philadelphia pair in 1897, and by that August they had carried nearly 5,000 passengers in competition with horse-drawn cabs.

The world's first police car, an electric wagon of 1899, served which Ohio city?

Akron's police department took delivery of the battery wagon in 1899, the same year a battery car became the first road vehicle to top 100 km/h.

Henry Ford's wife Clara drove which battery-car brand, builder of about 13,000 cars from 1907 to 1939?

Detroit Electric coupes were advertised at 80 miles per charge and about 20 mph; Henry bought Clara a Model C with a special child seat in 1908, and Edison and Lizzie Borden owned them too.

Which wedge-shaped Florida microcar of 1974 was for decades North America's most-built post-war electric car?

The CitiCar was inspired by a golf-cart design and the 1970s fuel crisis; its makers built 4,444 of all variants, a post-war North American record that stood for more than 30 years.

Which 2011 World Car of the Year was the best-selling EV ever until the Model 3 passed it in 2020?

The Nissan Leaf went on sale in late 2010 with an EPA range of only 73 miles, yet bigger batteries had pushed that to 226 miles by the time the Model 3 overtook it.

Which electric kei car, on Japanese fleets from July 2009, was also sold in Europe as the Peugeot iOn?

The Mitsubishi i-MiEV was a battery version of the petrol Mitsubishi i, and after Japan's 2011 earthquake Mitsubishi announced a box to let it power home appliances in a blackout.

Which two-seat Honda was North America's first hybrid in 1999, seven months ahead of the Prius?

The Insight's first generation was a two-door liftback that until 2015 ranked as the most fuel-efficient petrol car the EPA had ever certified, at 61 mpg on the highway.

Which Chevrolet hatchback, 2017 Motor Trend Car of the Year, launched with a 238-mile EPA range?

The Bolt EV also took 2017 North American Car of the Year and a place on Time's 25 best inventions of 2016, though a battery-fire recall later halted production until a fix was found in 2022.

The 'Blade' battery, developed by a Chinese carmaker, is built around which cobalt-free chemistry?

Lithium iron phosphate, or LFP, is cheaper and less prone to fire than cobalt chemistries, though it stores less energy for its weight.

Stanley Whittingham built the first rechargeable lithium battery in the 1970s at which oil company?

Exxon patented Whittingham's lithium metal battery in 1977 and built it with a titanium disulfide cathode, hoping to sell it for small devices and electric vehicles; he later shared the 2019 Nobel.

Which Japanese electronics giant put the first commercial lithium-ion battery on sale in 1991, powering its camcorders?

Sony's cell built on the safe design Akira Yoshino had worked out at the chemical firm Asahi Kasei, and it first proved itself in the company's 8 mm camcorders.

Which former Renault F1 driver took the first Formula E drivers' title in 2015 by a single point?

Nelson Piquet Jr. beat Sébastien Buemi by one point at the London finale, six years after Renault dropped him and he revealed he had been ordered to crash on purpose in Singapore.

Tesla's first production car, the 2008 Roadster, borrowed its chassis design from which British sports-car maker?

Lotus built the Roadster's chassis at Hethel in England, based on its Elise, and Tesla fitted the battery and motor; production ended once the supply contract ran out at the end of 2011.

Porsche's first electric car, the Taycan, takes its name from Turkish words that mean roughly what?

Lively young horse comes from tay (colt) and can (lively), a nod to the steed on Stuttgart's coat of arms that sits on the Porsche crest; the 'Turbo' trims have no turbocharger at all.

Which revived GM brand's electric pickup can drive diagonally in its 'Crab Walk' mode?

Hummer's EV uses four-wheel steering to crab sideways, and at more than 9,000 pounds it is among the heaviest consumer vehicles sold in the United States.

Which Croatian hypercar hit 412 km/h in 2022, making it then the world's fastest production electric car?

The Rimac Nevera ran 412 km/h at Germany's Papenburg track in November 2022; founder Mate Rimac started out by converting his 1984 BMW to battery power after its engine blew in a race.

Which Volkswagen electric racer first broke eight minutes up Pikes Peak, in June 2018?

The ID.R, driven by Romain Dumas, set 7:57.148 to beat Sébastien Loeb's outright record in a petrol Peugeot, and cut a full minute from the previous electric mark.

Which British inventor's 1985 one-person electric trike, the C5, sold just 5,000 of the 14,000 built?

Clive Sinclair had been fascinated by electric vehicles since a 1950s holiday job, but the C5 is remembered as 'one of the great marketing bombs of postwar British industry' and sent its maker into receivership.

Britain's best-selling electric car for several years, the tiny G-Wiz, was built in which country?

India's Reva Electric Car Company built it in Bangalore from 2001 to 2012, and it sold best in London, where battery cars escaped the congestion charge.

Which country mined more than 70 per cent of the world's cobalt in 2024, a key metal in many EV batteries?

DR Congo's cobalt comes from the Copperbelt it shares with Zambia; Indonesia, which recovers cobalt from its nickel ores, has become the distant second producer.

Which carmaker took back and crushed most of its EV1 electric cars, as told in a 2006 documentary?

General Motors built just over 1,100 lease-only EV1s in the late 1990s, then reclaimed and crushed most of them, the saga behind the film 'Who Killed the Electric Car?'; a few went to museums.

Which Chinese smartphone giant launched its first car, the SU7 sedan, in March 2024?

Xiaomi builds the SU7 at its own plant and began taking orders on launch day, 28 March 2024; within 230 days the phone maker had built 100,000 of them.