Turn out the lights on the EV

Every auto producer in the world has an electric car in the works; General Motors, of course, will start producing its Volt later this year.

But in actuality, the car of the future is really a throwback to the past.

In 1899, an electric car was clocked going over 60 miles an hour. And a little over a decade later, a Detroit Electric managed to travel 211 miles on a single charge (by comparison, General Motors' Volt will go just 40 miles on a single charge before its back-up gasoline engine kicks in).

In an ironic twist of fate, it was the invention of the electric starter that all but killed the electric car, since you no longer needed the physique of a weightlifter to crank-start your internal combustion engine.