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
Battery electric vehicle City began testing a 66-passenger battery-powered school bus, an all-electric version of the Blue Bird TC/2000. A similar bus was operated in Napa Valley, California for 14 months ending in April, 2004. The 2008 Beijing Olympics used a fleet of 50 electric buses, which have a range of with the air conditioning on. They use Lithium-ion batteries, and consume about . The buses were designed by the Beijing Institute of Technology and built by the Jinghua Coach. The batteries are replaced with fully charged ones at the recharging station to allow 24-hour operation of the buses. In France, the electric