That is why the electric car was abandoned in the childhood of motoring

Researchers have studied the American car market at the turn of the last century.

In 1900, 20 percent of the newly produced cars were powered by petrol, the rest were electric cars and steam cars, according to Josef Taalbi.

- We wanted to understand why we still got petrol cars, he says.

In the study, which was published in Nature Energy, the researchers used a register of 36,000 car models that contained data on the price, the cars' fuel, where the cars were produced and how extensive the electricity grid was there then.

- And then we found that the tendency to choose electric cars was much greater in areas that had good access to electricity.

In the clip, you hear what the researchers think the transport system could have looked like - if history wanted it differently.