Imagine the following situation:

You became aware that in the beginning of the 21st century it is essential to take care of the environment.

As you want to buy a new car you consider / think about buying an electric one.

-> Note: What would you like to know when buying an electric car?

-> Form questions from your notes to be asked to the car retailer

 Cough, splutter, chug, choke—is the way cars have been till now. Humm, whirr, whiz, glide—is the way they'll probably be tomorrow. Sooner or later, whether it's in a couple of decades or a distant century, oil-based fuels will be far too precious to squander on the world's dwindling fleet of gas-powered cars. That's when a confident majority of electric car drivers will peer back over the shoulder of history to a time—the twentieth century—when automotive technology took a drastic wrong turn. At least, that's how many people think the story will go.

Electric cars use older technology than gasoline cars and, in their late-19th-century infancy, looked set to rule the world. The first electric car was built in 1834 and by 1900 some 38 percent of all cars were electric (according to Seth Leitman's book Build Your Own Electric Vehicle, p.34). But oil was cheap and abundant and, in many ways, offered a better method of powering fast cars over long distances. Henry Ford's mass-production of affordable gas-powered cars soon put paid to electric dreams. Fortunately, as people finally woke up to the environmental and economic drawbacks of petroleum in the late 20th century, technology turned full circle and cars powered by the zap of electricity started to return to our streets. But is it really inevitable that all cars will go electric? How long will it take? Before we can consider that question, it helps to ask something much more fundamental: how exactly do electric cars work? What's so good about them anyway—and what are the drawbacks? Can you really go to work powered by a few buzzing electrons? Let's take a closer look!