Electric battery common fuels such as gasoline. In automobiles, this is somewhat offset by the higher efficiency of electric motors in converting chemical energy to mechanical work, compared to combustion engines. The usage of "battery" to describe a group of electrical devices dates to Benjamin Franklin, who in 1748 described multiple Leyden jars by analogy to a battery of cannon (Benjamin Franklin borrowed the term "battery" from the military, which refers to weapons functioning together). Italian physicist Alessandro Volta built and described the first electrochemical battery, the voltaic pile, in 1800. This was a stack of copper and zinc plates, separated by
Electric vehicle battery the cost of automotive battery packs to be between to per kilowatt-hour by 2020. A 2013 study by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy reported that battery costs came down from per kWh in 2007 to per kWh in 2012. The U.S. Department of Energy has set cost targets for its sponsored battery research of per kWh in 2015 and per kWh by 2022. Cost reductions through advances in battery technology and higher production volumes will allow plug-in electric vehicles to be more competitive with conventional internal combustion engine vehicles. In 2016, the world had a Li-Ion production capacity