By the end of the 1990s, the electric vehicle didn’t seem like it had much of a future at all.
Bowing to auto industry and oil sector pressure, California backed off a revolutionary mandate that would’ve required 2% of all new cars sold in the state to be zero-emission. That gave General Motors a pass to kill the groundbreaking GM EV1, and for most other automakers to backburner their EV investments as well. Gas was cheap, our climate emergency didn’t feel as palpable as it does now, and people were in love with their big SUVs.
But soon, a new player would come along that would literally change everything. And as controversial as it, and its CEO, can be today, you might not be reading this article without them.
(Welcome to The History of Electric Vehicles, where we’ll cover the many ways EVs have been a part of more than 150 years of automotive history. This is the final installment, we look at how Tesla completely changed the modern automotive landscape. Also read part one, part two, part three, part four and part five of the series.)
The story of Tesla Motors has been told extensively and at length elsewhere, so we won’t go into all of the gritty details. But our series on EV history moves into the 21st century, it simply must be covered.
Tesla Motors was founded in 2003 by engineers and entrepreneurs Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning. Elon Musk joined the company as the largest shareholder one year later. Musk, already wealthy from his sale of PayPal (which, fun fact, was called X.com before it changed its name after a merger) and was looking to invest in a company that made electric cars and Tesla was the perfect fit.
This EV startup would redefine how the world perceived electric cars, accelerating the shift from combustion-powered cars to full EVs like no other company.
Its initial model, the Roadster, launched in 2008, used a modified Lotus Elise chassis and was an expensive two-seater toy. But it proved that EVs could not only have enough range to quell range anxiety but also enough straight-line pace to put a smile on your face and the Lotus-derived chassis made it good through the corners too.
The Roadster had an EPA range of 244 miles, all thanks to its battery pack, which was revolutionary for the time. It was one of the first cars in production to utilize lithium-ion batteries, previously mostly utilized for powering electronic devices such as laptops. It used the same type of battery cell that you would find in a typical laptop battery, only it had a lot more of them, 6,831 to be precise.
But, then as now, building an EV was easier said than done. In designing the Roadster, Tesla engineers found they often lacked parts to make a proper modern electric vehicle, so they often just had to make their own. This led to it becoming a vertically integrated company, one that’s less dependent on outside suppliers for parts and even software than so-called “legacy” automakers. This approach has been followed since by other startups, the Chinese auto sector and now even the established car companies; it helps them move fast and control every aspect of the car they build, and it’s easily one of Tesla’s secret superpowers.
Tesla somehow managed to sell lots of Roadsters and even though it was a low-volume vehicle mostly sold in the U.S., it set the stage for the EV revolution that we’re amid today. Since it was not based around a bespoke EV platform, its batteries were all located where the engine used to sit in the Elise, in a tall pack behind the seats.
Beyond The Roadster: The Nissan Leaf And Tesla Model S
But even if the Roadster was a niche vehicle, the idea of EVs was beginning to catch on by the end of the 2000s and start of the 2010s. The close of the first decade of the 21st century came with the Great Recession (which Tesla Motors itself barely survived) and the subsequent bailouts of the American auto industry. This, and a White House occupied by President Barack Obama, led many to wonder if the auto sector needed to go “greener” as part of its rebirth.
Chrysler, for example, seemed to have big plans for an electric future, announcing several EV concepts that included a minivan and a sports car. It was unfortunately axed in 2009, as the automaker considered it too early to move on. “Until the (battery) storage gets resolved, I think electric vehicles are going to struggle,” then-Fiat Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne told Motor Trend, adding that electric vehicles would account for only “1 to 2%” of Chrysler’s sales by 2014. Past CEO Bob Nardelli once promised to have half a million EVs on the road by 2013. Even today, 100,000 in a year is tough to crack (aside from Tesla.)
And while it wasn’t a purely electric vehicle, one of the most groundbreaking electrified cars ever made came out around that time: the Chevrolet Volt. The plug-in hybrid car debuted in 2010 as a competitor to the Toyota Prius and Tesla, and it retains a loyal following today.
The innovation of turning the vehicle’s entire floor pan into a battery pack came with the introduction of the Nissan Leaf in 2010. It had been conceived as an EV from the ground up, and its 24 kWh battery pack was entirely in its floor. This only provided 73 miles of EPA range, so in 2016, Nissan introduced a larger 30 kWh battery, increasing the range to 107 miles.
Nissan designed the Leaf’s body with aerodynamic efficiency in mind, which is why it ended up looking the way it did. Even the shape of the headlights plays a crucial role in channeling airflow in a specific way and reducing wind resistance, leading to a drag coefficient of 0.29, subsequently lowered to 0.28 for the 2013 model year.
One year before the Leaf appeared on the scene, in 2009, Mitsubishi revealed the i-Miev, which was also sold with Peugeot and Citroen badges. It was based around a Japanese kei car and featured a 16-kWh battery pack that gave it an EPA range of just 62 miles. It is credited as being the first true modern mass-produced EV, but it wasn’t as impressive a technical achievement as the Leaf, which was reflected in its global popularity.
The turning point for the modern EV came with the 2012 introduction of the Tesla Model S. It had 60 or 85 kWh battery packs that were not only much bigger than in any other EV, but they were also liquid-cooled, which was a first for a production EV. The Roadster also had liquid-cooled batteries, but it was a much lower-volume car than the Model S and not as significant for the automotive world.
The Model S, which was intended as a challenger to Mercedes and BMW and the rest, was a game-changer unlike any in the auto industry had seen in decades.
The Model S with the 85 kWh battery pack had an EPA estimated range of 265 miles, and the P85 model with its 416 horsepower output could sprint to sixty in about 4.2 seconds, making it as quick as many sports cars of the day in a straight line. It was also a luxurious vehicle with lots of tech and the biggest infotainment screen ever fitted to a car. The Model S’ 17-inch kickstarted the trend to have huge infotainment touchscreens, removing physical buttons and relocating functions to the screen.
BMW also deserves a mention for its i3, which was introduced in 2013 and kept in production until 2022. It was at one point the world’s second-best-selling EV after the Nissan Leaf (it’s worth noting that it was a lot more popular in Europe than in the US). The i3 is significant because it was also a ground-up EV. It was created with sustainability in mind, and its structure was made of carbon fiber-reinforced polymer to keep the car light. It was also one of the world’s first extended-range EVs, with the introduction of the i3 REx.
Before launching the i3, BMW experimented with low-volume electric versions of its Mini Cooper, the Mini E in 2010, and 1 Series, the Active E in 2012.
Around the same time the i3 was making its debut, other automakers were already working on their own EVs and had clear plans to start building them. All of the cars in this rather lengthy series played their part in giving us the stylish, tech-packed, powerful and long-range EVs that we can enjoy today.
The rest, as they say, is history—until now, anyway. Tesla’s runaway success, Volkswagen’s diesel cheating scandal and tightening emissions and fuel economy rules worldwide have the rest of the industry looking more toward an EV future than ever now in the mid-2020s. Nearly every car brand has EV offerings, it’s the fastest-growing automotive segment and the charging infrastructure and technology gets better all of the time.
Yet the same old questions—range, charging, profitability, the battery supply chain and so on—continue to rear their heads even now. If there’s one thing we know from looking at the 120-plus year history of the electric vehicle, it’s that progress is almost never on a straight line and the future is guaranteed to no one. But more than ever, this technology looks like it’s going to be around for the long haul.
Did You Know?
The Monaco-based sports car manufacturer Venturi introduced a very similar vehicle a few years before the Tesla Roadster in 2004. It was called the Venturi Fétish and it had a 241-horsepower electric motor drawing from a 54-kilowatt-hour battery pack that gave it a claimed range of 211 miles. Unlike the Tesla, which sold in the thousands, only 25 were built and each cost €540,000 (equivalent to $710,000 back then). The name, it must be said, may have been a bit of a turn-off too.
