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
Plug-in electric vehicles in the United States will be plug-in hybrids or full battery electrics by 2030. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) in its 2017 Annual Energy Outlook 2017 projected that all-electric vehicles sales in the United States will increase from less than 1% in 2016 to 6% in 2040 of total light-duty vehicles sold in the country, and plug-in hybrid electric vehicle sales will increase from less than 1% to 4% over the same period. According to the EIA projected sales of light-duty battery electric, plug-in hybrid electric, and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles will reach 1.5 million in 2025, about 9% of projected total sales