Electric cars predate Silicon Valley by 150 years, emerging from 1830s Scotland as fragile prototypes before Robert Anderson carved an early path with motorized carriages. By 1900, refined batteries enabled quiet, clean carriages to roam Manhattan amid horse waste while gasoline engines risked wrist-breaking hand cranks and steam boilers threatened explosions. Electrics captured upscale buyers and fleets with civilized power.

Market favor tilted after $850 Model T Fords undercut electric pricing in 1908, a gap that widened as mass production and Charles Kettering’s starter erased gasoline’s flaws. Filling stations multiplied, range anxiety inverted, and Columbia electrics lost ground to cheap combustion sedans and road-trip culture. Women and luxury buyers abandoned plug-ins as fossil convenience rewrote American mobility economics.

Cycles of revival flickered through NASA rovers, 1970s oil shocks and wedge-shaped CitiCars, then General Motors built the EV1 clean-sheet before crushing it. That corporate retreat seeded AC Propulsion’s tZero sports car and lithium-ion experiments in San Dimas, closing the loop on a technology that refused permanent burial. These fits and starts shaped an industry still negotiating cost, range and control.