01
Origins
João Gurgel's Itaipu of 1975 — named for the great dam then rising — was Latin America's first production-intended electric car: a tiny two-seat box with lead-acid batteries, built by the Brazilian engineer-entrepreneur whose company already made beach buggies and utility vehicles on Volkswagen bones. Range and pace were period-electric modest, and the market for urban EVs in 1970s Brazil proved essentially theoretical; few were built. But the Itaipu crystallised Gurgel's nationalist engineering creed — Brazilian design, Brazilian industry, imported nothing — that would culminate in the BR-800. Half a century later, with the country's streets filling with imported EVs, the little Itaipu stands as poignant precedence: the right idea, from the wrong decade, in the most hopeful possible place.
1975 Gurgel Itaipu · Marcelo Bezerra Cavalcanti;cropped and otherwise altered by uploader Mr.choppers · CC BY 3.0
