Early modern electric cars…

Decades before Tesla began becoming a household name and a symbol for high-tech on wheels, there were modern electric cars in America. 

The most recent of these and best known, was General Motors’s EV1 was an electric car produced and leased to consumers by General Motors from 1996 to 1999. The two-seater coupé was the first mass-produced and purpose-designed electric vehicle of the modern era from a major automaker and the first GM car designed to be an electric vehicle from the get go and was offered on a lease-basis only. Its driving range started at 55 miles and improved to 105 miles when technology went from lead acid to nickel-metal hybrid batteries.

When production ended in 1999, a total of 1,117 EV1s had been produced. In 2002, GM notified lessees that it would be taking cars off the road from customers. This created a much ill-will for GM. This story came to my attention mainly through the 2006 documentary film “Who Killed the Electric Car?” that questioned GM's decision. 

Longer before that, however, back in the late 70s, just when we immigrated to the United States, there was already an electric car called the “Lectric Leopard”: These were made by Chandler Waterman, of Athol, in Massachusetts. The man imported Renault LeCar bodies without an engine. He then installed an electric motor and 16 - 6 volt lead acid batteries. 

These batteries weighed 66 pounds each, for a total of 1056 pounds of batteries, a heavy price to pay in terms of performance. It had a range of 35–40 miles, assuming you weren’t running the heater, which would significantly reduce the range.

Top speed was 50 mph. The imported LeCar’s did not have an engine, but kept the factory 4 speed manual transmission and clutch, which made the car cumbersome to drive. 

About 60 of these vehicles were built and some are still in use today after having been extensively modified or upgraded (particularly to better batteries). 

So now, you know that the road to today’s modern electric cars is paved with an impressive number of precursors that didn’t quite enjoy the same success and fame of Tesla and his founder Elon Musk, who ironically got involved with that brand in 2004, just after the mighty General Motors through the towel on its first EV...