The electric car isn't a newfangled idea birthed from the neck of a generation of idealists jaded by the economic, cultural, and atmospheric cost of oil. Our grandparents' grandparents' generation dreamed of electric cars. Some of them actually built the clear, quiet vehicles. And yet, the crop of electric cars feel, over a century later, futuristic. What changed between the 1830s and today? What took the electric car so long?

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