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If you were buying a car in 1899, you would've had three major options to choose from.
如果你要在1899年买一辆车，你会面临三个主要的选择。
You could buy a steam-powered car.
你可以买一辆蒸汽动力汽车。
Typically relying on gas-powered boilers, these could drive as far as you wanted
通常靠锅炉推动，想要去多远都到得了，
provided you also wanted to lug around extra water to refuel and didn't mind waiting 30 minutes for your engine to heat up.
前提是你不介意携带额外的备用补充水，也不介意等30分钟烧水暖机。
Alternatively, you could buy a car powered by gasoline.
你也可以买一辆汽油驱动的汽车。
However, the internal combustion engines in these models required dangerous hand-cranking to start and emitted loud noises and foul-smelling exhaust while driving.
然而这些车型的内燃机需要危险的手摇启动，行驶中还发出巨大的噪音和难闻的废气。
So your best bet was probably option number three: a battery-powered electric vehicle.
所以你最好的选择可能是第三个选项：由电池驱动的电动汽车。
These cars were quick to start, clean and quiet to run, and if you lived somewhere with access to electricity, easy to refuel overnight.
这些车启动快、环保，且运行安静，如果你住在供电的地方，很容易在夜间充电。
If this seems like an easy choice, you're not alone. By the end of the 19th century, nearly 40% of American cars were electric.
如果看似选择简单，并不只有你这么想。到19世纪末，近40%的美国汽车是电动的。
In cities with early electric systems, battery-powered cars were a popular and reliable alternative to their occasionally explosive competitors.
在一些有早期电力系统的城市，电动汽车是一种受欢迎且可靠的替代品，与它们偶尔会爆炸的竞争对手相比。
But electric vehicles had one major problem -- batteries. Early car batteries were expensive and inefficient.
但电动汽车有一个主要问题--电池。早期的汽车电池既昂贵又低效。
Many inventors, including Thomas Edison, tried to build batteries that stored more electricity.
许多发明家，包括托马斯·爱迪生，试图制造能储存更多电能的电池。
Others even built exchange stations in urban areas to swap out dead batteries for charged ones.
其他人甚至在城市地区建造电池交换站来更换没电了的电池。
But these measures weren't enough to allow electric vehicles to make long trips.
但这些措施还不足以让电动汽车长途旅行。
And at over twice the price of a gas-powered car, many couldn't afford these luxury items.
而且售价是汽油车的两倍多，许多人买不起这些奢侈品。
At the same time, oil discoveries lowered the price of gasoline, and new advances made internal combustion engines more appealing.
与此同时，石油的发现降低了汽油的价格，新的技术进步使内燃机更具吸引力。
Electric starters removed the need for hand-cranking, mufflers made engines quieter and rubber engine mounts reduced vibration.
电子启动替代了手摇点火，消音器使发动机更安静，橡胶支座使发动机减少振动。
In 1908, Ford released the Model T; a cheap, high-quality gas-powered car that captured the public imagination.
1908年，福特发布了T型车，这款廉价、高品质的汽油动力汽车攫取了公众的兴趣。
By 1915, the percentage of electric cars on the road had plummeted.
到了1915年，公路上行驶的电动汽车的比例急剧下降。
For the next 55 years, internal combustion engines ruled the roads.
在接下来的55年里，内燃机主宰了道路。
Aside from some special-purpose vehicles, electric cars were nowhere to be found. However, in the 1970s, the tide began to turn.
除了一些特殊用途的汽车，电动汽车几乎绝迹。然而，在20世纪70年代，潮流开始转向。
US concerns about oil availability renewed interest in alternative energy sources.
美国对石油供应的担忧重新激发了人们对新能源的兴趣。
And studies in the 1980s linking car emissions with smog in cities like Los Angeles encouraged governments and environmental organizations to reconsider electric vehicles.
20世纪80年代，洛杉矶等城市的汽车排放与雾霾有关的研究，鼓励政府和环境保护组织重新考虑电动汽车。
At this point, car companies had spent decades investing in internal combustion engines without devoting any resources to solving the century-old battery problem.
至此，汽车公司已经花了几十年投资于内燃机，却没有投入任何资源来解决长达一个世纪的电池问题。
But other companies were developing increasingly efficient batteries to power a new wave of portable electronics.
但其他公司正在开发越来越高效的电池为新蜂拥而至的便携式电子产品供电。
By the 1990s, energy dense nickel metal hydride batteries were on the market, soon followed by lithium-ion batteries.
到了20世纪90年代，市场上出现了高能量密度的镍氢电池，很快，锂离子电池也问世了。
Alongside regulatory mandates by California to reduce smog, these innovations sparked a small wave of new electric vehicles, including hybrid cars.
与加利福尼亚州减少雾霾的监管规定一起，这些创新引发了一波新的电动汽车的浪潮，这也包括混合动力汽车。
Hybrids aren't true electric vehicles; their nickel metal hydride batteries are only used to optimize the efficiency of gas-burning engines.
混合动力车并不是真正的电动汽车；他们的镍氢电池仅用于优化燃汽油发动机的效率。
But in 2008, Tesla Motors went further, grabbing the attention of consumers, automakers, and regulators with its lithium-ion-powered Roadster.
但在2008年，特斯拉汽车公司进一步创新，其锂离子动力跑车吸引了消费者、汽车制造商和监管机构的注意力。
This purely electric vehicle could travel more than 320 kilometers on a single charge, almost doubling the previous record.
这种纯电动汽车一次充电可以行驶320多公里这几乎是以前记录的两倍。
Since then, electric vehicles have vastly improved in cost, performance, efficiency, and availability.
从那以后，电动汽车在成本、性能和成本方面都大大提高了。
They can accelerate much faster than gas-powered sports cars,
它们的提速比汽油动力跑车快得多，
and while some models still have a high upfront cost, they reliably save their drivers money in the long run.
尽管有些车型的前期费用仍然很高，从长远来看，它们确实为车主省了钱。
As governments around the world focus on slowing climate change, electric vehicles are now expected to replace gas-powered ones altogether.
随着世界各国政府对减缓气候变化的关注，电动汽车有望完全取代汽油驱动车。
In Norway, 75% of car sales in 2020 were plug-in electric vehicles.
在挪威，2020年75%的汽车销售是插入式电动汽车。
And policies such as California's Zero Emission Vehicle mandate and Europe's aggressive CO2 emission standards have dramatically slowed investments in gas-powered vehicles worldwide.
加利福尼亚州等地的零排放汽车法令和欧洲积极减排等政策，极大地减缓了全球对汽油动力车的投资。
Soon, electric cars will reclaim their place on the road, putting gasoline in our rearview.
电动汽车很快将重新占据它们在道路上的位置，超车汽油车，将其抛在后面。
