The moment we hear about electric cars, you will probably be thinking that the best engineers in the largest automobile companies in world, like BMW, Ford, Mazda etc. were the ones that first came up with the idea of an electric / hybrid car. Well... this is far from the truth! You will be amazed to know that the history of electric / hybrid cars can be traced back to the 18th century! It was in 1665 when Ferdinand Verbiest decided to build an unmanned steam car for the Chinese king that the thoughts of this type of car first sprouted.

Now, this may sound like pure coincidence but another great example in history of electric or hybrid style vehicles can be found in an individual called Robert Anderson, who built an electric vehicle in 1839. A singular accomplishment in the same year was by Mortiz Von Jacobi who used an electric boat to sail across the Thames in England.

Two considerable developments were recorded in 1886 and 1888. The first was an electric powered cab tried in England while the latter was a four passenger carriage built by Immisch & Co that was powered by a 24 cell battery. The challenge for all these vehicles were covering long ranges and producing enough power to pull such mass forward. Today, over 100 years later, this is still the same challenge that the electric / hybrid car is facing today!

Though the concept of producing a hybrid / electric car is ancient, it didn't gain any real popularity until the end of 20th-century. Today, we have lightweight fuel cell technology that can produce more power and longer ranges without adding too much extra weight to a car's frame. These factors are the guiding principles to creating an electric vehicle.

The major challenge for an electric car is to increase the range, the maximum range being 100 miles - this is a big problem for anything other than inner city driving. Things improve by charging the battery, especially if charging the battery only takes a couple of minutes but this is not the case either. You need hours to complete a charge and this is painstaking - whether you have run out of the charge in the city or on the highway.

On the up side, electric cars have many advantages. They are extremely cheap to run and have less of a maintenance cost. For those that travel less than 100 miles a day, it is easy and convenient to be able to charge your car from home each night without having to bother to go to a gas station.

A hybrid, compared to a pure electric car uses both gasoline and electricity to run which makes it more practical in real-life conditions today. These cars, however, had a problem in connecting both power modes effectively and most cars used their power sources separately and not in a harmony. Hybrid cars were essentially gasoline cars with an electric motor.

The surprising change to the industry has come with the Chevrolet Volt, an excellent hybrid car that has taken the technology one step further. Chevy Volt, unlike other hybrid cars, use electricity to run for the first 35 or 40 miles and the moment the battery runs out, it switches to a gasoline powered generator, not the engine directly and this offers another 260 mile range for your Volt.

We are talking about outstanding technology here and how far it will succeed will depend on the hybrid's price and feedbacks. Electric cars are also improving rapidly and with quicker charging batteries that can cover longer distances, they can literally take things to a new level and change the face of the automobile industry and environment to our benefit. We can't wait to see the new developments in this exciting and world changing area.