50 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 40 per cent of American cars in 1900, battery power took 38 per cent and petrol just 22 per cent. Petrol only pulled clear after Charles Kettering's self-starter ended hand-cranking in 1912.

Which torpedo-shaped Belgian car became the first road vehicle to pass 100 km/h, in April 1899?

La Jamais Contente, 'the never satisfied', hit 105.88 km/h on batteries with Camille Jenatzy driving. It beat 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.

Norway's 2016 transport plan set a goal for all new cars sold to be zero-emission by which year?

2025 was the target, and Norway nearly hit it early: battery-electric cars were 88.9 per cent of new-car sales in 2024, the world's highest share for years running.

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 on sale and was China's cheapest electric car at US$4,162 for the base model. Global sales have since passed 1.1 million.

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, China's top brand since 2023, stopped building pure combustion cars in March 2022?

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 a different rider from its classic V-twin customers, and it was the company's first electric vehicle of any kind.

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 chased an electric, self-driving vehicle for a decade and ended in 2024 without a product.

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

Dyson had 400 people working on the car by 2017 and planned three models in a $3 billion project, but James Dyson said in October 2019 that there were not enough buyers to make it viable.

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.

Which Japanese fast-charging standard takes its name from a pun on 'how about a cup of tea?'

CHAdeMO stands for 'CHArge de MOve' but also echoes the Japanese 'o cha demo ikaga desu ka', a joke about the time a charge takes. TEPCO launched it in 2010 with Toyota, Nissan, Mitsubishi and Subaru.

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 for the battery in every phone and EV; his 1980 cobalt-oxide cathode doubled the capacity of earlier lithium cells.

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, and its biggest customer is Amazon, which agreed in 2019 to buy 100,000 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.

European Union rules since 2019 make electric cars play an artificial warning sound up to what speed?

20 km/h is the cut-off: below it an EU-approved EV must hum at a minimum of 56 decibels so pedestrians can hear it coming, a rule extended to all new quiet cars from 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 world's first city with a fully electric fleet, and they were built by the hometown company that is now the world's biggest EV maker.

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 the design of its plug in November 2022 and SAE standardised it as J3400.

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

Milk floats from local dairies made up most of the world's battery road vehicles for much of the twentieth century; the UK Electric Vehicle Association made the claim in an August 1967 press release.

Which Hungarian priest ran a small model car on his own newly invented electric motor in 1828?

Ányos Jedlik's 1828 motor, kept today at Budapest's Museum of Applied Arts, pushed a model powered by a non-rechargeable battery, decades before any full-size electric carriage.

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; practical electric cars had to wait for the lead-acid battery of 1859.

Andreas Flocken's 1888 Elektrowagen, the first electric production car, came from which German town?

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.

Which Frenchman's 1859 lead-acid battery first made storing electricity on board a vehicle viable?

Gaston Planté's cell was the first rechargeable battery of any kind, and its descendants are still widely used in cars today as the humble starter battery under the bonnet.

Morris and Salom built the Electrobat, a pioneering American battery car, in 1894 in which city?

Philadelphia's Henry G. Morris, a mechanical engineer, and chemist Pedro G. Salom built it, three years before New York got its first fleet of battery taxis.

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 13,000 coupes 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 North America's most-built post-war EV until 2011?

The CitiCar was inspired by a golf-cart design and the 1970s fuel crisis; Sebring-Vanguard built 4,444 of all variants, a North American post-war record no EV beat until 2011.

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

The Nissan Leaf also took the 2011 European Car of the Year and Car of the Year Japan awards; its record year was 2018 at 87,149 sales, third behind the Model 3 and a Chinese BAIC model.

Which kei car, on Japanese fleets from July 2009, was the first modern highway-capable mass-production EV?

The Mitsubishi i-MiEV was based on the petrol Mitsubishi i kei car and was also sold in Europe wearing Citroën badges as the C-Zero.

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 from China's biggest EV maker is built around which cobalt-free chemistry?

Lithium iron phosphate, or LFP, is cheaper and safer than cobalt chemistries; by September 2022 it held 31% of the EV battery market, and two EV makers accounted for 68% of that.

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.

Akira Yoshino built the first safe, production-viable lithium-ion battery at which Japanese firm?

Asahi Kasei still lists Yoshino as a fellow; his cell was the one that went into mobile phones and laptops, and at Kyoto he attended a course taught by Kenichi Fukui, the first East Asian chemistry Nobel laureate.

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

Nelson Piquet Jr. clinched the title at the London finale, a single point ahead of Sébastien Buemi, after a Formula One career with Renault that ended midway through 2009.

Early Formula E drivers swapped cars halfway through each race because what kept running out?

Battery charge could not last a full race in seasons one to four, so drivers pitted and climbed into a second car; the Gen2 car's new battery roughly doubled capacity and ended the practice.

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 10,000-lb electric pickup can drive diagonally in its 'Crab Walk' mode?

Hummer's EV uses four-wheel steering to crab sideways, and at roughly 10,000 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 test track in November 2022, and in May 2023 set 23 records in a single day, including 0-100 km/h in 1.82 seconds.

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.

The EU's 'Fit for 55' deal of June 2022 effectively bans new combustion cars from which year?

2035 was agreed after 16 hours of talks by the climate ministers of all 27 member states, following a European Commission proposal in July 2021 for a 100% cut in new-car emissions.

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; in London it sold from about £9,995 and was exempt from the congestion charge.

Which country mined roughly three-quarters 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.

The London Underground's electrifier Thomas Parker built his first electric car in 1884 in which town?

Wolverhampton's Parker also electrified tramways in Liverpool and Birmingham and invented the smokeless fuel Coalite; a photograph of one of his cars survives from 1895.

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; it was the first motor vehicle the phone maker had ever developed.