It's interesting too looking back on the early politics of the electric car versus the gas car. The electric car was the "lady's car" because it was less messy,

It's interesting too looking back on the early politics of the electric car versus the gas car. The electric car was the "lady's car" because it was less messy, more reliable, easier to use, quieter, more efficient (higher range in some early cases). The gas car was the "man's car" because it was louder, harder to start, harder to maintain, needed a fuel that was harder to acquire, was overall less reliable. There's an interesting alternate history tale to be told if the Ford Motor Company had been lead instead of by Henry Ford by his wife Clara Bryant Ford (who was a big proponent for electric cars, in addition to being an interesting suffragette).