Gustave Trouvé built the electric three-wheeler demonstrated in Paris in 1881, often cited as the first electric car.
Trouvé was a French electrical engineer and inventor who adapted a small English tricycle by fitting it with an electric motor and rechargeable batteries. He demonstrated the vehicle in Paris in April 1881, showing that stored electrical energy could propel a road vehicle without animal power or a steam engine.
The vehicle was light and experimental, and it was not a mass-produced automobile. Historical descriptions sometimes call it the first electric car, while other accounts use different definitions of “car” or give priority to later four-wheeled vehicles. The wording therefore matters: Trouvé’s machine was a three-wheeler and a pioneering demonstration.
Trouvé also worked on portable electric devices, electric boats, and medical instruments. His 1881 road vehicle predates the better-known electric-car manufacturing efforts that appeared in Europe and the United States later in the nineteenth century.