VOLTS & VENGEANCE
It starts with a monk.
- Hungary. Ányos Jedlik makes a tiny motor spin using electricity, tells nobody, and goes back to praying. He just invented the foundation of the entire EV industry. The world ignores it for 200 years.
That's this book in miniature.
EVs were actually winning in 1900.
One in three American cars was electric. They were silent, clean, and fast. In 1899, a torpedo-shaped Belgian EV broke 100 km/h - first vehicle ever to do it. Electric.
Then Texas found cheap oil. Game over for 80 years.
The great betrayal: GM EV1, 1996.
General Motors built an electric car people described with religious reverence. Leased 1,117 of them. Then recalled every single one and crushed them in the Arizona desert while customers begged to buy them.
Someone made a documentary. The answer to Who Killed the Electric Car? was: mostly oil companies and a car industry that made money from 2,000 spare parts, not 20.
Enter Tesla. Enter chaos.
- Silicon Valley startup nobody heard of releases a sports car doing 0-100 in 3.7s and 394 km range. Using laptop batteries. Built by people who'd never made a car.
The industry laughed.
Then came Model S - highest NHTSA safety rating ever recorded. Then Model 3 - world's first EV to sell 1 million units. Then Model Y - world's bestselling car of any kind in 2023.
Tesla went from nearly bankrupt in 2008 (Musk put in his last personal cash) to a $1 trillion market cap in 2021. Greatest corporate glow-up in history.
Meanwhile, China woke up.
Wang Chuanfu founded BYD in a rented factory in 1995. Warren Buffett invested $232M in 2008. Everyone thought Buffett had lost his mind.
BYD sold 3.02 million EVs in 2023. Tesla sold 1.81 million.
Buffett had not lost his mind.
BYD also makes the Seagull. $11,000. 405 km range. 600,000 sold in year one. The moment premium tech becomes something everyone can own.
Korea had its moment.
Hyundai Ioniq 5: World Car of the Year 2022. Kia EV6: same award, same year. Kia EV9: won it again in 2024.
Back-to-back-to-back. Korea. Nobody saw that coming. Especially not Germany.
(Japan: invented the hybrid in 1997, sold 20 million, then spent 15 years saying pure EVs weren't ready. Now desperately building solid-state batteries. Clock is ticking.)
India's moment: written in snow.
- Tata Nexon EV launches at ₹13.99 lakh. Becomes India's bestselling EV three years running. Gets driven up Khardung La at 5,360 metres in Ladakh. In the cold. Makes it.
Today: 100,000+ Nexon EVs on Indian roads. Ola selling scooters by the millions. Mahindra BE 6 with 682 km range. The question isn't should I get an EV? It's which one?
The physics bit (quick, painless):
Electric motors make maximum torque at zero RPM. Petrol engines need to rev up first. That's why a 2-tonne Rimac Nevera - 1,914 hp, built in Croatia by a guy named Mate who started in a garage - hits 100 km/h in 1.97 seconds and tops out at 412 km/h.
€2.4 million. 150 units. Every one sold.
The only honest conclusion:
Battery costs dropped 93% in 16 years. In 2024, prices fell below $100/kWh - the threshold economists said would make EVs cost-competitive with petrol. It happened.
The tipping point is behind us. Not ahead.
Jedlik's little motor spun in 1828. It just took the world two centuries to notice.
- Mohit Pandey · Almora, Uttarakhand · 2026 [email protected] · @mohucool
