Transitioning to electric vehicles is essential to meeting our climate goals. But there are so many barriers to overcome – from expanding EV charging infrastructure, to updating the power grid, to mining the metals that make batteries go.
In the first of a two part series on decarbonizing transportation, we try to answer the critical question: is it all happening fast enough to avoid the worst climate impacts?
Featuring: Craig Bentley, Nora Naughton, Sara Baldwin, Thea Riofrancos
The century-old EV comeback
Over a century ago, a third of all cars on the road were electric vehicles. According to this Department of Energy timeline of the electric car, electric vehicles had their first heyday from 1900 to 1912. EVs were marketed to women at the time because they were cleaner than gas cars and didn’t have to be manually crank-started.
Isabel Anderson, the first woman in Massachusetts to get a driver’s license, owned two electric cars, including the 1908 Bailey Electric Phaeton Victoria (above) and the 1905 Electromobile (below). Both vehicles are on display at the Larz Anderson Auto Museum.
EVs fell out of fashion by mid-century. Then in the 1990s, a comeback was afoot in California, but was swiftly crushed less than a decade later. The film Who Killed The Electric Car documents what happened and why.
Today, the question being asked isn’t “will we switch to electric cars?” More than 5% of car sales in the U.S. are electric, a threshold experts say is the tipping point for mass adoption. Today, the question is, “will we transition fast enough to avoid the worst climate impacts?”
