Why Electric Cars Failed

Electric vehicles (EV's) have been around for over 100 years but have struggled in the automotive world for most of that time. Lack of EV infrastructure, reliability concerns and fire hazards have always plagued the minds of EV potential buyers until a bit more recently. Lets take a look at some EV's of the past that may have been promising but ultimately failed.
William Morrison was born in Scotland UK in 1855. Morrison later emigrated to the United States where he invented his electric motor carriage. He stayed in the US until his death in 1927.
All video and music credit is given both here and at the end of the video.
Videos:
-Jay Leno's Garage
-RoadandTrack
-Bloomberg Quick Take Originals
-Justin Beale
-Motor Week
-WHAS11
-Bright Sun Films
-Video Archive: Videos from the past
-Y-MOTORCAR-Y
-BMWBLOG
-BmwWestIsland
-The Miniac
-Stellantis North America
-Driving The Nation
-Cars.com
-Car and Driver
-CarDataVideo
-Consumer Reports
-Cowboy Car Crushing
Music from Freesound.org
-productionnow
-davejf
-oymaldonado
-disquantic
-dpren
-furbyguy
Thanks for checking out my video!

[@valerielesur6562]

Great video. Extremely well done and well-researched, as well as entertaining to watch! Some very suprizing information as well. Kind of a bummer that so many promising EVs failed without a good reason.

[@vpbr86]

Enjoyed the old footage! My old boss drove a market testing Ford electic car back in the 80s. Of course the company took it back after 6 months and they never went to market.

[@coryhiatt3244]

Really interesting and informative. Love all the old videos and pictures also! Great job!

[@da_garage383]

Thank you! I'm glad you liked it.

[@myghtyjayne7446]

That was really interesting! I had no idea electric vehicles weren't a recent invention!

[@da_garage383]

I thought that was pretty interesting too. When doing the research I knew they went back but I didn't know they went back over 130 years.

[@joyceletcher217]

Very fascinating and informative. I really enjoyed this video!

[@heidilesur6937]

Very interesting. Watched this video with the kids as part of a homeschool lesson today. Thanks!

[@da_garage383]

That's really cool! I'm glad you got to use my video as part of a learning lesson.

[@Zobeid]

Good stuff, thanks for posting this. I remember being excited about the Dodge Circuit EV, at a time when the Tesla Roadster was experiencing delay-after-delay getting to production. However, the Circuit was obviously a "me too" product based on the Lotus platform and following the same basic recipe that Tesla had already cooked up. It wasn't the only one trying to jump on that bandwagon. Another example is the Detroit Electric SP:01. This company claimed their name from one of those long-defunct electric car makers of the pre-WW1 era, but it was an entirely new company. Like the Tesla Roadster, it was based on the Lotus Elise platform. However, it seems like the SP:01 never actually reached production, and the new Detroit Electric company never got any traction. Overlooking the SP:01 is easy, but it puzzles me how forgotten the Venturi Fétish has become. It had a similar look and specs as the Tesla Roadster, but was not based on a Lotus platform, and it actually was produced and delivered to customers before the Roadster. However. . . Venturi only produced 25 cars total, the price was several times higher than the roadster, and I don't think any were even sold in the USA. The Venturi Fétish and the Tesla Roadster didn't just appear out of nowhere. Around the same time we had the original Aptera, the Tango, the Wrightspeed X1, the Lightning GT. . . all of which were hyped but never made it beyond prototypes.

[@da_garage383]

The Venturi Fétish. I just had to look up that car because I've never heard of it or if I did I must not have been paying attention... I've seen pictures of it but had no idea that's what it was. Very interesting! Thanks for your in depth comment as well. There's soooo much in the EV world that we - or maybe just I have forgotten about and they provided the tech we take for granted now days. Thanks again for the comment. I'm glad you enjoyed my video even though it was just a tiny snippet of extensive EV evolution.

[@aNPERcs]

How can you not mention Peugeot 106 Électrique and Citroën Saxo Electrique? The Peugeot 106 EV was the best selling electric car in the world before Nissan Leaf overtook it. Also Renault Clio Electrique.

[@da_garage383]

Sounds like it would have been worth mentioning, but I've actually never heard of either of those cars. Learn something new everyday, huh? Also my basis for this video was from an old Car and Driver magazine discussing future EV's. It's my own scripting but my main source was from that magazine so I only went over some of the cars from that. Thanks for the comment! I'll check out those two cars you mentioned.