The electric vehicle seemed poised in 1900 to be a leader in automotive production. Clean, odorless, noiseless and mechanically simple, electrics rarely broke down and were easy to operate. An electric car could be started instantly from the driver's seat; no other machine could claim that advantage. But then it all went wrong. As this history details, the hope and confidence of 1900 collapsed and just two decades later electric cars were effectively dead. They had remained expensive even as gasoline cars saw dramatic price reductions, and the storage battery was an endless source of problems. An increasingly frantic public relations campaign of lies and deceptive advertising could not turn the tide.

For more than a century, people have attempted to harness electricity, the clean and versatile fuel, for personal transportation. With impressive technical clarity and historical insight, author Ernest Wakefield reviews these attempts in History of the Electric Automobile: Hybrid Electric Vehicles. He focuses exclusively on electric vehicles that harness the potential of electricity when combined with another energy source - hybrid electric vehicles (HEV). The book details the historical development of capacitors, engines, flywheels, fuel cells, inductive charging, and solar cells - and the application of each to hybrid electric vehicles.