To tell the history of the electric car one must start from a long way back. And decisively broaden the field of vision to encompass the entire development of electrification. This is because, while the former is often described as a revolution in the field of mobility, the latter "has completely upended the world we know and redrawn its maps at both the macro and microscopic level". Pietro Minto is a journalist and writer who since 2014 has curated one of Italy's most widely read newsletters, "Link Molto Belli", in which every week he shares the most interesting and curious discoveries made online; he has written three books: "Come annoiarsi meglio", "Cos'è Amazon" and "La seconda prova. Imparare la matematica, vent'anni dopo". Now, he explains, "electrification is spoken of above all in relation to the automotive sector, but in reality electrification is the foundation of contemporary society".

Between the late 19th and early 20th century, much of the world was largely electrified and radically changed its face. A revolution in which Italy played a leading role: it was in Milan, in 1883, that the first thermoelectric power station in continental Europe was established — the third in the world, after those in London and New York which had come into operation only a few months earlier.

A history shaped by politics, economics and even social customs

"In an early phase," Minto recounts, "electric cars and those powered by fossil fuels had advanced in parallel — indeed the former had progressed more rapidly on a technical level; then a series of political and cultural events, also tied to energy dynamics, caused the latter to prevail". But there is also another theme — more closely linked to social customs — that in some way carried its own weight. From the very first years of production, electric cars were targeted primarily at a female audience because they were less "dirty", quieter and easier to drive: this "paradoxically created a prejudice, a reputation of the electric as not very masculine, which in some way persisted over the years, contributing to the myth of the petrol-powered car as a masculine vehicle — a myth that exploded in the 1950s and 60s, boosted also by the economic boom. In the United States, a society with a culture deeply permeated by the automobile, the mythology of the cowboy moving on horseback was essentially replaced by that of the contemporary man behind the wheel of a petrol car".

Today it is possible to come across black-and-white photographs that might look thoroughly modern: urban landscapes with rows of electric cars, a long charging cable emerging from the bonnet. They are electric vehicles, yet we are in the early years of the last century. Between 1832 and 1839, the Scottish inventor Robert Anderson built the very first prototypes of what we would today call an electric car — in truth more akin to a cart of the era, but without the pulling power of a donkey or horse and without the black smoke of coal-fired locomotives. Speaking of which, if 1859 saw the arrival of the first rechargeable batteries, another Scotsman (Robert Davidson) invented the first electric locomotive a few years later. An innovation that immediately alarmed railway workers, terrified by the prospect of losing their jobs. And so we arrive at 1894, when in the United States the "Electrobat" went on sale — what can effectively be considered the first electric car on the market. For a point of comparison, it was only 9 years earlier that a German engineer by the name of Karl Benz patented a two-stroke engine and built the first vehicle to use it: the Benz Patent Motorwagen, a three-wheeled automobile capable of reaching 16 km/h. From that point on, manufacturers refined their models, and in 1892 Rudolf Diesel patented a new type of engine that still bears his name today — just 2 years ahead of the first electric car.

A few facts…

• 1883: the first thermoelectric power station in continental Europe is established in Milan.
• 1885: German engineer Karl Benz patents a two-stroke engine and builds the first petrol-powered car, the Benz Patent Motorwagen.
• 1892: German engineer Rudolf Diesel patents a new type of engine that still bears his name today.
• 1894: the "Electrobat", the first electric car in history to go on sale, is put on the market in the United States.

What lay behind the return of electric cars to the market in the 1990s

Now let us make a temporal leap of a century to the early 1990s, when electric cars began to reappear on the market. At the heart of this kind of return to the past, Minto explains, "were the major innovations made in batteries. The opening up of new possibilities in the field of accumulators allowed for the rediscovery of electric technology, albeit amid the initial scepticism one might expect". Progress on lithium batteries, in particular, initially came about in the context of other technological fronts such as computers and mobile phones, but then proved useful in the automotive sector as well. And at that moment "a great push came from environmental, cultural and political factors. Before the return of full electric cars, starting with the first hybrids, these vehicles were used as a kind of declaration of intent by the more progressive side of society".

Now that the path towards the electrification of mobility seems to be set, questions are being asked about whether the Italian grid is potentially equipped to support an entirely electric car fleet. "Probably not," Minto replies, "but we are talking about a gradual process that depends on the spread of public charging points and home storage systems, to avoid a constant draw on the electricity grid". In essence, we return to the starting point: talking about electric cars means addressing the issue of electrification as a whole, because these dynamics "presuppose a global rethinking — one that is already under way — that goes even beyond the world of four wheels.

Electric: reliability is not in question, but (for now) hybrid wins out

One of the central issues now is understanding whether, in terms of reliability, electric technology is comparable to petrol or diesel engines. According to Minto, "there are now many high-quality electric vehicles that have been on the market for years, yet a large gap remains between the reality of these cars' efficiency and effectiveness and the public perception of them, because they are often wrongly considered fragile and delicate". It is then inevitable to address the question of the unknowns surrounding the range achievable on a single charge: "Statistical data show that every Italian travels an average of 38 kilometres per day, moreover at a very low speed, below 50 kilometres per hour; we are talking about a pattern of car use that, even today, an electric vehicle can comfortably handle on a single charge per week".

Read the full version of the chapter at this link.