An interesting perspective from our friend in Australia about electric vehicles that were in use in the 19th Century.
"Alright, I’m gonna say this slowly for the mouth-breathers in the back screaming “EVs will never work” like it’s some kind of personality. Electric vehicles are older than petrol cars. That’s not a vibe. That’s history. Learn it.
Electric cars existed in the 1800s. Nineteenth. Fucking. Century. Before petrol cars were reliable. Before mass car ownership. Before most of your arguments were even theoretically possible. The key breakthrough was the rechargeable lead-acid battery in the mid-1800s. Once people could store electricity, they immediately started sticking motors on wheels. By the late 1890s, electric cars were not rare, not experimental, not a woke fantasy. They were normal, especially in cities.
Around 1900, the global car market was split between steam, electric, and petrol. Petrol was not dominant. Electric cars made up a significant share, particularly for urban driving. That alone should shut up half the comment section, but here we are.
And yes, the photos everyone freaks out about are real. New York had electric taxis starting in the 1890s. Fleets of them. Warehouses full of electric cabs. Centralised charging. Even early battery swapping. This isn’t speculation, it’s documented history. There are literal photos of electric taxis lined up and plugged in while half of Facebook still thinks charging was invented by Tesla.
Meanwhile, petrol cars back then were absolute pieces of shit. Loud. Filthy. Unreliable. And to start them, you had to hand-crank the engine, which routinely broke arms and occasionally killed people. That was the “tough guy” technology. Getting hospitalised by your own car before you’d finished breakfast. Electric cars didn’t do that. They were quiet, smooth, clean at point of use, and easy to operate. That’s why doctors used them. That’s why city drivers used them. That’s why women used them. And yes, there are documented images of women in Victorian clothing charging electric cars in garages. This wasn’t weird. It was normal.
So why didn’t EVs take over the 20th century? Here’s where the fossil fuel fairy tale collapses like a cheap camp chair. Electric cars didn’t lose because they “don’t work”. They lost because of timing, economics, and infrastructure, not physics.
First, mass production. Petrol cars got dirt cheap when assembly lines kicked in. Electric cars were still built more like appliances. Price matters. People buy what they can afford. End of story.
Second, petrol cars only became tolerable because of electricity. Early petrol vehicles were dangerous to start. Then the electric starter motor arrived in the early 1910s and suddenly petrol cars stopped injuring their owners. Internal combustion literally owes its popularity to electric tech. That irony apparently flies straight over some very shiny heads.
Third, and this is the big one the Facebook geniuses always fuck up:
electricity itself was not widespread yet.
In the early 1900s, cities had electricity. Rural areas mostly didn’t. In the US, the majority of farms had no electricity well into the 1930s. You cannot run a nationwide EV system without a nationwide grid. Liquid fuel had a logistics advantage at the time because you could move it anywhere with barrels and pumps. That wasn’t because petrol was superior. It was because the grid wasn’t finished.
That’s it. That’s the real reason. EVs didn’t fail. The world wasn’t ready yet. Now fast-forward to today and watch the stupidity really kick in. We now live in a fully electrified society. Electricity everywhere. Homes. Cities. Factories. Farms. Solar on rooftops. Batteries in garages. Fast chargers. Smart grids. Backup grids. EVs are no longer early. They are right on fucking schedule. So when someone says “EVs will never work”, what they’re actually saying is: “I think the infrastructure of 1910 is permanent and I’ve emotionally attached my masculinity to petrol.”
That’s not common sense. That’s historical ignorance mixed with confidence. Then come the cope arguments. “You need mining for batteries.” No shit, Einstein. You need mining, drilling, refining, shipping, and constant extraction for oil. The difference is oil gets burned once and disappears forever. Batteries work for years. This is not the gotcha you think it is. “EVs are unproven.” They were in regular use before petrol cars dominated. They’re older than most of the idiots arguing against them. “The grid can’t handle it.”
The grid already handles air conditioners, data centres, industry, and everything else modern life depends on, and it keeps expanding. Petrol only looks easy because society spent over a century building infrastructure, subsidies, pipelines, refineries, tankers, and wars to make it feel normal.
And here’s the peak hypocrisy. The same bloke screaming about EVs is standing at a servo, paying through the nose to burn imported fuel, then blaming someone else for the price while defending the system fucking him sideways. That’s not freedom.
That’s addiction with branding. Electric vehicles aren’t a fad. They’re a return.
They lost the 20th century because electricity hadn’t finished building itself yet.
They’re gaining ground in the 21st because now it has. And the loudest critics aren’t defending reality. They’re defending nostalgia, ignorance, and a fuel system that needed a century of infrastructure and subsidies just to feel “normal”. This isn’t a failed experiment. It’s history repeating itself, except this time the grid is ready.
