History of Vehicle Electrification 13 Connecting Bar Silver Zinc Separator Figure 4 Voltaic pile. Leyden jars connected together in series with a battery of military cannons thereby coining the phrase “battery” (Franklin & Marshall College, The Phillips Museum of Art, 2008). Another important discovery in the evolution of the battery was made in Italy in the late- 1700s by Alessandro Volta. However, it was not until 1800 when Volta published the results of his years of experiments with what he called a “Voltaic Pile” that his discovery became widely known ( Figure 4 ). Volta’s invention proved to be the first electrochemical energy storage cell.
The Voltaic pile consisted of two metal plates, one made of zinc and one made of copper, which formed the electrodes, and were separated by a piece of cloth soaked with an electrolyte made of either sulfuric acid or saltwater brine. When the top and bottom contacts were connected by a wire, current would flow with the actual voltage being dependent on the number of pairs of metal plates in the pile (Jonnes, 2004). The next major evolutionary step in the development of the modern battery occurred in 1859 when Gaston Plante, a French physicist, invented the first rechargeable lead–acid storage battery.
Shortly thereafter and based largely on the work of Plante, Camille Faure, another French inventor, improved on that technology by enhancing its current capability in 1881. The work of these two inventors was the basis for the modern lead–acid battery that is used in every automobile today and that sparked the early growth of the both electric mobility and stationary energy storage markets (Buchmann, 2011; Jonnes, 2004). Not to be outdone, Thomas Edison developed a nickel-based battery in an attempt to compete with the lead–acid battery that was being used in the early electric cars in the early 1900s.
But it was not until the early 1970s and into the 1990s before real improvements and innovations in other chemistries were made that really drove the leap in electrification that we see today. But let’s hold that thought for a moment while we examine the industrial landscape of the period.