Thomas Edison, the First Era of Electric Vehicles, and Today's EV Boondoggle

Edison was one of the competitors involved in the development of the electric car. It is not accurate to say that Edison invented what we call the electric vehicle; there were many people working on that idea and some were ahead of Edison, who invented the electric light bulb.

Edison was a genius at research, development and patenting. He obtained over 1,000 American patents. He also had help during part of his career from Nikola Tesla, the electrical engineering genius.

Edison had a number of patents that directly related to the electric vehicle. He patented an Electric Generator or Motor (1884); an Electric Locomotive (1891); a Means for Propelling Electric Cars (1891); a Reversible Galvanic Battery (1900); an Electrode for Batteries (1901); an Electric Automobile (1903); an Alkaline Battery (1904); an Electrical System for Automobiles (1912); a Starting and Current-Supplying System for Automobiles (1912); and Friction Speed Governors (brakes - 1913).

In Edison's patent on a Means for Propelling Electric Cars (1891), the drawings clearly illustrate a car that resembles an electric street car or trolley. Edison was moving into the electricity-generation business, and electric street cars would generate more revenue for him both in sales of cars and electricity.

The drawings in his patent for a Means for Propelling Electric Cars (1891) refer to a device that appears more like a trolley car than an automobile, but what Edison claimed in his patent was general: "The combination of an electric motor, an armature having a driving-shaft, a sprocket-wheel thereon, one or more idle-pulleys supported by the field magnet of the motor, a sprocket-chain passing around said wheel and idle-pulleys, and a driven sprocket-wheel outside of the chain and in engagement therewith..." This could be interpreted as applying to the drive train of an electric car.

Edison is famous for saying, "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." Characteristically, he struggled in developing his electric car. His 1903 patent on the Electric Automobile actually referred to a vehicle with a steam or fluid-pressure engine and an electric motor. But the vehicle had a clutch, and it was one of the first to resemble what is today called an electric vehicle.

Of course, eventually gas cars outsold electric vehicles, but obviously electric vehicles are making a comeback today.

"Businesses" in the U.S. today - if that term can even be used - face a radically different world than that of the year 1910. At that time, there was no permanent income tax. Nor was the situation like it is today, where foreign competition is largely free from organizations like the IRS. There weren't that many state-sponsored organizations from abroad that targeted markets even before they are created. Patents were cheap, quick and easy. There was no concerted government effort to regulate business to the point of destruction. Companies then were not constantly struggling with worker unions or being sued under personal injury theories and discrimination theories. This combination of factors - plus the fact that gas vehicles and oil are still quite profitable - explains why electric vehicles are not widely available today.