You might think that electric cars are a relatively new invention, but actually scientists were exploring the potential of using electricity to power a car – or what was actually back then a carriage – from the mid-19th century.

The true inventor of the electric car is still debated today. However, if you want to trace the electric car back to its humblest origins, in 1828 Hungarian inventor Anyos Jedlik created a type of electric motor that he used to power a small model carriage.



The invention of an electric carriage that could carry people, meanwhile, took place at some point between 1832 and 1839. The exact year remains unknown, but Scotsman Robert Anderson is widely credited as having invented an electric carriage with crude non-rechargeable batteries in that time.

Between 1834 and 1835, American Thomas Davenport also invented an electric carriage, while scientists from Holland and Hungary are credited with the invention as well.



Perhaps most importantly, though, in 1865 French physicist Gaston Plante invented a rechargeable battery that would make electric motoring a more practical proposition.



Indeed, all of today's purely electric cars – from the Renault Zoe to the Tesla Model S – owe their existence to Plante's breakthrough and require plugging in to recharge their batteries. But in the near future you might be able to simply drive your car onto a special plate in order to recharge it wirelessly. This is known as inductive charging.