We Could Have Had Electric Cars from the Beginning

In that year, missionary Ferdinand Verbiest created a steam wagon to bring the Emperor of China to Jesus, but the car was only big enough to carry a rat. Reporting on the bicycle and automobile show at Madison Square Garden in January 1899, a New York Times journalist noted that the normally avant-garde US was “far behind the European countries in adopting the bicycle and motor vehicles. Motor World reported in 1903 that John Jacob Astor owned fifteen automobiles, including a $17,000 Mors from France (equivalent to half a million dollars today).

Source: longreads.com