Almost Great: GM EV1

We’ve pointed out before that the modern wave – possibly ‘glut’ if you’re not a fan of battery power – of EVs is nothing new. Electricity gamely duked it out with gasoline as a prime energy source up to 1910, when the killer-app known as the Ford Model T forced EVs into the doldrums for over a full century.

But in the early 2010s, EVs made a comeback spectacular enough to rival Napoleon wading up the beach at Golfe-Juan in 1815, the heroic end of Niki Lauda’s 1976 F1 season, or Michael Jordan stepping back onto a basketball court in 1995.

So, which cars pioneered this EV 2.0 resurgence? Many would give the credit to Tesla. In 2008 the Californian startup with the cheesy name stuffed a Lotus Elise tub with a half-tonne of cell-phone batteries to launch what many would claim to be one of the first modern EVs. I would suggest that 2010 saw the real breakthrough – the unloved and unlovely Nissan Leaf. It had looks that only its mother could admire, but showed that a reasonably practical EV could not only be mass-produced, but affordably so. Eighteen months after that, in June 2012, Tesla launched the Model S. Its range, straight-line performance and good looks sealed the deal, aided by lashings of California tech-cool. The modern generation of EVs was here to stay – like it or not.