Stylish electric vehicles include the 1990s Sparrow PTM "Jellybean" and Willie Nelson's Rolls Royce golf cart.

Route 66 Electric Vehicle Museum

Kingman, Arizona

In a USA fueled by petroleum, electric vehicles had been viewed warily: wind-up ducks foundering in an ocean of oil. That outsider status makes an EV collection more surprising than the typical combustion-engine showcase -- and the bonus surprise of the Route 66 Electric Vehicle Museum is that it's on Route 66, traditionally a torrent of dreamy gas-guzzlers.

Early underpowered EVs had a lot of lightweight plastic.

The museum began when Kingman hosted the 2014 Route 66 International Festival; its theme was "The Crossroads of the Past and the Future." Roderick Wilde, curator of the world's largest collection of historical EVs, was asked to bring some of his vehicles to Kingman to support the idea that Route 66 could one day become an "electric highway," with EV charging stations along its entire 2448-mile length.

The Peel Trident from England boasted that it was the World's Smallest Car.

The display of old EVs was an unexpected hit, and a few of them stayed. Over time more vehicles were added, and the temporary exhibit gradually established itself as a permanent Kingman museum.

The Custer Chair was street-legal in its day. Few have survived.

"We wanted to get as many vehicles into the building as possible," said Josh Noble, the city's tourism services manager, who described his museum job as "receive cars, orientate things, watch things, and dust." What began as a collection of ten vehicles now numbers 35, with roughly 100 stored off-site. "It was so popular that we had an overabundance of cars donated," said Josh of the museum. "Things are now kind of crammed in."

The museum collection spans 100 years of historical EVs, from a 1909 "baggage tug" to a 2008 Tesla Roadster, the same model that was later fired into space (during our 2025 visit, museum staff assured us the only "resistance" activity there was electrical resistance -- in EV engineered conductors).

"People think it all started with Tesla," said Josh, who points visitors to the museum's 1930 Detroit Electric, which was such a status car in its day that Henry Ford's wife owned one. "It was really popular with ladies," said Josh, "really upper class." The driver sat in the back seat, and the front seats swiveled so that everyone could face each other and have polite conversation as they puttered along.

On the left: the 320 mph Buckeye Bullet 2.5. On the right: the rickety Lyman Electric Quad.

The 1930 Detroit Electric was popular with well-to-do women.

Not every vintage electric vehicle was genteel. The tiny 1920 Custer Chair Car promised "Miles of Smiles for a Penny" but would have been death to any driver in a road accident. Ditto for the 1970 Lyman Electric Quad, a vehicle so lightweight that a stiff breeze could knock it off the highway. We asked Josh about the many golf carts on display in the museum, and he pointed out that they're in fact NEVs: Neighborhood Electric Vehicles -- with brand names such as Electric Shopper and the Marketeer -- popular with residents of gated retirement communities. The only two actual golf carts in the museum once belonged to Willie Nelson (modeled on a Rolls Royce) and Waylon Jennings (modeled on a Mercedes-Benz).

We couldn't decide which would be more unnerving to Route 66 traditionalists: a museum of electric vehicles, or the knowledge that Waylon and Willie -- founders of Outlaw Country music -- played golf.

Power cable tangles: a familiar sight in America's garages of the future.

With its diminutive size and globular shape, the Sparrow PTM (Personal Transit Module), nicknamed the "Jellybean," was so futuristic for the 1990s that it made a cameo appearance in the Austin Powers film, Goldmember. Powerful EVs on display include the Lightning Rod II, the first electric hot rod, built by Roderick Wilde in a 1929 Ford Roadster; the SuckAmps high performance racer, built in an old mail truck; and the 1980s Kawashocki electric drag bike that could go over 200 mph.

Route 66 EVs will have to be more roadworthy than this one.

Taking up a large amount of floor space are two experimental EVs: the flat-topped Xenith solar car, powered at highway speeds entirely by the sun; and the museum's most popular vehicle, the Buckeye Bullet 2.5, a ballistic EV streamliner that hit 320 mph on the Bonneville Salt Flats.

Josh mentioned that the Route 66 Electric Vehicle Museum building, over 100 years old, is haunted. We asked if the resident ghosts sometimes started up the cars for laughs, and Josh pointed out that no one would ever really know. "They're electric," he said. "You wouldn't hear it if they did."

And just outside the historic EV Museum/Powerhouse building? Something like two dozen modern charging stations -- convenient, and forecasting a Route 66 future that sees its last fossil fuel vapor on the horizon.