If you imagine the 1st electric car as a sort of Victorian Tesla, you’re not far off. Long before gasoline took over, early electric vehicles were gliding silently through European boulevards and American cities, sold as clean, refined alternatives to noisy, smelly engines. Understanding the story of the first electric car doesn’t just scratch a history itch; it helps you see today’s EVs, and the used EV market, in a very different light.
Spoiler: electric came before gasoline (in practice)
The first practical electric vehicles appeared on streets in the late 1800s, years before gas cars became a mass-market force. For a while, electricity looked like the obvious future of personal transport.
Why the 1st electric car still matters today
Ask "What was the 1st electric car?" and you’ll quickly discover there’s no single, clean answer. Depending on how you define car, prototype, practical vehicle, production model, or taxi in regular service, you get different winners. But all of those early EVs share three things modern shoppers care about: battery range, charging convenience and how the car fits into everyday life.
How early EV questions sound exactly like yours
The 1890s buyer was asking the same things you are in 2025.
“How fast is it?”
“How far can I go?”
“Where do I ‘refuel’?”
Seen through that lens, early electric cars stop being quaint museum pieces and start looking like draft versions of the EVs parked outside your office right now. And if you’re considering a used electric car, their story has a lot to say about technology that ages well, and technology that doesn’t.
So what actually counts as the 1st electric car?
Historians don’t agree on a single "first" because electric vehicles evolved in layers, not as one lightning-bolt invention. Here’s how the credit usually gets divided up:
Who built the “first electric car”? Depends on your definition.
Different milestones compete for the title of 1st electric car.
| “First” for what? | Usual winner | Year | Where | What made it noteworthy |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| First electric road vehicle demonstration | Gustave Trouvé’s electric tricycle | 1881 | Paris, France | A battery-powered trike driven on public streets, proof that an electric motor and batteries could move a person, not just lab equipment. |
| First practical electric carriage | Various French and British builders | Late 1880s–early 1890s | France & UK | Full-size, steerable road vehicles with usable range, closer to what we’d call cars. |
| First production electric car | Flocken Elektrowagen | 1888 | Coburg, Germany | Four-wheeled electric carriage built by Maschinenfabrik A. Flocken; widely regarded as the first electric car produced for sale. |
| First successful U.S. electric car | William Morrison’s 6‑passenger wagon | ~1890 | Des Moines, Iowa | A six‑seater electric wagon that hit about 14 mph and sparked commercial interest in EVs in the U.S. |
| First electric taxi fleet | Electrobat taxis | 1894–1897 | Philadelphia & New York | One of the earliest EV fleets, including taxis with swappable batteries operating in Manhattan. |
From experimental tricycles to the first production EV, several pioneers can legitimately claim to be first, at something.
Think in categories, not a single winner
When someone asks who built the 1st electric car, the better response is: "Do you mean the first prototype, the first practical car, the first production model, or the first one people actually used every day?" Each question has its own champion.
Early experiments: when “cars” were science projects
The road to the 1st electric car starts with scientists and tinkerers messing around with batteries and motors. In the early 1800s, inventors in Europe and the U.S. built small-scale electric vehicles, more like powered models than practical transport. They were trying to answer a basic question: can a battery and motor move anything heavier than a lab toy?
- Early motors were weak, heavy and inefficient, so most "cars" were glorified demonstration rigs on rails or short tracks.
- Rechargeable batteries were primitive, with limited capacity and miserable lifespans.
- There was no road infrastructure to speak of, cities were crowded, muddy and built for horses, not for experimental machinery.
Things changed as rechargeable lead–acid batteries improved and electric motors became more compact. By the early 1880s, Gustave Trouvé in Paris was driving his electric tricycle along city streets, and the notion of a real, usable electric carriage moved from fantasy into the realm of the possible.
From lab to street: the first practical electric carriages
In the late 1880s and early 1890s, several builders in France, Britain, Germany and the U.S. started turning experiments into carriages you could actually ride in. These looked like horse buggies with the horse edited out, wooden or steel bodies, big spoked wheels, tiller steering, and a stack of batteries hidden under the seat or floor.
How the first electric cars were powered
- Batteries: Lead–acid cells, literally glass or rubber jars of acid and lead plates, wired together for voltage.
- Motor: A compact DC motor driving the rear axle via chains or direct-drive gearing.
- Controls: A big controller lever acting as throttle and direction selector, forward, neutral, reverse, plus a separate mechanical brake.
What driving one was actually like
- Quiet and smooth: No exhaust, no chuffing pistons, just gear whine and tire noise.
- City‑focused: Speeds between 3 and 15 mph fit perfectly in dense urban traffic.
- Home charging: Owners with access to electricity could plug in at night, long before "home charging" was a buzzword.
The big limitation: energy density
Those early batteries were brutally heavy for the energy they stored. That’s why so many 19th‑century EVs were big, slow carriages: the body had to carry hundreds of kilos of lead just to get 30–40 miles of range.
Flocken Elektrowagen: the first production electric car
If you insist on a single name for the 1st production electric car, the safest bet is the Flocken Elektrowagen, built in 1888 by German engineer Andreas Flocken. It was a four‑wheeled electric carriage that you could actually order from a factory, rudimentary, sure, but recognizably a car and not just a one‑off science experiment.
Flocken Elektrowagen at a glance
We don’t have a spec sheet you can shop from, this was the 19th century, not a modern brochure, but the Flocken Elektrowagen marks a turning point: electricity wasn’t just for demonstrations and hobbyists anymore. You could, in principle, walk into a workshop, sign paperwork and drive (well, trundle) away in an electric car.
Baker Electric and the golden age of city EVs
By the turn of the 20th century, electric cars had moved from side show to serious contender. In the U.S., companies like Baker Motor Vehicle Company in Cleveland started selling elegant closed‑body electrics, the kind of car you imagine a banker’s wife driving to a department store in 1909.
Why Baker Electric felt like the future
On paper, it sounds surprisingly modern.
Refined, not rowdy
Marketed to comfort seekers
Real‑world range
Visitors also read...
"More than a hundred years before Tesla, the Baker Electric was covering 80 miles on a charge and silently gliding down city streets. We didn’t suddenly invent the electric car, we remembered it. "
Today, you can watch Jay Leno roll his 1909 Baker Electric Coupe out of the garage and drive it around Los Angeles, proof that well‑built early EVs can still move under their own power a century later. That’s not something you can say about many gasoline cars of the same era without major surgery.
Electric taxis, swappable batteries and other déjà vu moments
If you think ideas like ride‑hailing and battery swapping are Silicon Valley novelties, the 1890s would like a word. In 1894, Henry Morris and Pedro Salom built the Electrobat, one of the first electric automobiles, and soon evolved it into a fleet of electric taxis.
The Electrobat taxi experiment
- Electric taxis operated in cities like Philadelphia and New York in the mid‑1890s.
- Passengers praised the smooth, quiet ride compared with clattering horse‑drawn cabs.
- The limiting factor, no surprise, was battery weight and charging time.
Battery swapping in the 19th century
- The operators built depots where exhausted battery packs were swapped for charged ones in minutes.
- Taxis could run all day without waiting around on a charger, exactly what modern swap‑station startups promise.
- It worked, but it required serious infrastructure and capital, just like today.
We’ve been here before
Shared fleets, quiet city cabs, centralized charging depots, even battery swaps, almost every hot EV idea you read about in 2025 had a rough‑draft version running around in the 1890s.
Why gasoline beat early EVs
Given the head start, why didn’t the 1st electric cars win the 20th century? They had a lot going for them, silence, ease of use, no gear‑changing gymnastics, but three big forces tipped the scales toward gasoline.
Three reasons the first EV wave fizzled
1. Cheap oil and the Model T
Gasoline got dramatically cheaper just as Henry Ford’s Model T (1908) made cars affordable for the middle class. Suddenly, you could drive far, refuel quickly and buy the car itself for much less than a bespoke electric carriage.
2. Batteries hit a wall
Lead–acid chemistry couldn’t deliver the energy density to match people’s growing expectations for range and speed. Adding range meant piling on more lead, and at some point the physics says “no.”
3. Infrastructure and politics
Rural electrification lagged far behind gasoline distribution. Meanwhile, tax policy and industrial investment heavily favored oil, pushing combustion technology forward while EVs stagnated.
The quiet fade‑out
There was no single day when electric cars "died." They were simply out‑competed. By the 1930s, EVs had largely retreated to niches like delivery vans and industrial trucks, while gasoline cars took over the boulevard.
From Henney Kilowatt to Tesla: EVs grow up
After decades in the wilderness, electric cars re‑emerged in fits and starts. In 1959, the Henney Kilowatt tried to reboot the EV as a compact commuter car in the U.S., arguably the first mass‑produced post‑war electric car, though only a few dozen were sold. It was followed by curiosities like the Scottish Aviation Scamp in the 1960s and various prototype city cars in the 1970s and 1980s.
- In 1997, Toyota’s Prius showed that electrification could scale, starting with hybrids rather than fully electric cars.
- In the 2000s, low‑volume EVs like the GM EV1 and neighborhood electric vehicles tested the water but never went fully mainstream.
- The real inflection point came when lithium‑ion batteries matured and companies like Tesla proved you could build a long‑range, desirable EV, and sell it in meaningful numbers.
From there, the modern story is familiar: longer ranges, DC fast charging, and a wave of new EVs across every price point and segment. In other words, the second act of a play whose first act started in the 1880s.
What the first electric cars can teach today’s used EV buyers
So why should you, standing on a dealer lot in 2025, care about the Flocken Elektrowagen or a 1909 Baker Electric? Because the questions early buyers were asking, How far will it go? How long will the battery last? Who maintains this thing?, are exactly the questions you should ask before you buy a used EV.
Three lessons from the 1st electric cars
The tech changed; the logic didn’t.
1. Battery health is everything
2. Charging lives where you do
3. Total cost beats sticker price
Where Recharged fits into this story
At Recharged, every used EV comes with a Recharged Score Report that measures real battery health, analyzes fair market pricing and pairs you with EV‑savvy specialists. It’s our way of doing, with modern tools, what early electric‑car makers couldn’t: making EV ownership predictable and transparent.
If you’re comparing a few used EVs, think like a cautious Baker Electric buyer: ignore the hype and look at the fundamentals, battery diagnostics, charging options, and the way the car fits your actual life. A platform like Recharged can help you line up those pieces, arrange financing, explore trade‑in options and even get the car delivered to your driveway.
FAQ: the 1st electric car and early EV history
Frequently asked questions about the 1st electric car
The bottom line on the very first electric car
The 1st electric car isn’t a single moment; it’s a series of increasingly bold bets that electricity could move people quietly, cleanly and conveniently. From the Flocken Elektrowagen and Baker Electric to the Electrobat taxis, early EVs nailed the user experience but were let down by chemistry and infrastructure that simply weren’t ready.
A century later, the chemistry has changed and the infrastructure is catching up, but the logic is the same. If you’re shopping for a used EV today, you’re standing in the third act of a very long play. Learn from the first act: make the battery your North Star, choose a car that fits the way you actually live, and lean on transparent data instead of marketing. That’s exactly the gap Recharged was built to fill, so when you fall for an electric car, you do it with your eyes wide open.
