Daniel asks whether electric cars are going to take over from gasoline cars.

Mom asks him a more interesting question. Did he know electric cars were already competing with gasoline cars more than a hundred years ago?

He did not.

The earliest experimental electric carriages appeared in the 1830s. By around 1900, electric cars were serious competitors to gasoline cars in the United States -- quieter, easier to drive, free of exhaust on the street, and with no hand crank required to start. Clara Ford, Henry Ford's own wife, drove a Detroit Electric. Thomas Edison worked on improving electric car batteries. Electric taxis were running in New York and London.

And then several things changed the competition.

Gasoline cars became cheaper as manufacturing improved. In 1912 Charles Kettering developed a practical electric se ...