ANDERSON — When Bill Wylam’s grandparents left Anderson around 1915 after the city’s historic gas boom dried up, they were convinced Anderson had no future.

The newlyweds moved to western Pennsylvania to work in the steel mills there, and that is where the family stayed until Wylam moved back to Anderson to become part of what would be the country’s first flirtation with the electric vehicle.

Now, Wylam compares his grandparents’ leaving town to the loss of hope some people now feel for Anderson after General Motors, once the city’s lifeblood, left town and thousands of residents lost their jobs.

“My grandfather left town before the car had been electrified,” Wylam said, “before there was a (General Motors electrical supplier) Delco Remy, before there was the big future that everybody remembers Anderson for now. My grandfather missed all that. (People think) now that’s collapsed, Anderson has no future, just like it had no future in my grandfather’s mind in 1915.

“In 1915, Anderson had a hell of a future, and I suppose it does now.”

The driving force in Anderson’s future now is the electrification of the power train in vehicles, creating hybrids, plug-in hybrids and fuel cell-powered cars, Wylam said.

“All of these vehicles somewhere in the vehicle have electric motors that drive the wheels,” he said.

But Anderson’s involvement with the electrification of the vehicle started long before the wheels were turned by electricity. It started back when starters, windshield wipers and headlights were first being powered by batteries.

“What put Anderson on the map was the electrification of the vehicle,” Wylam said. “Wind your way back in history to a time when you couldn’t drive a car before Anderson made certain things possible.”

For example, the electric starter was invented by Charles Kettering at his Dayton, Ohio, company called Delco. The starter first appeared on 1912 Cadillacs, Wylam said. When Delco and Anderson electrical company Remy were combined in the 1920s and made into GM supplier Delco Remy, Anderson’s intimate involvement with the electric vehicle began.

“It occurred first in 1912, and it grew gradually over the decades to more and more powerful systems,” Wylam said. “Everything you like about a car is almost electrical in nature.”

None of Delco Remy’s electrical car supplies actually caused the car to run, however, until 1996, when it developed the motor and battery system for GM’s first electric vehicle, the EV1.

Although the EV1 ended up only as an experiment — a few thousand were leased in various parts of the country and then scrapped later by GM — its legacy remains in Anderson.

It didn’t take long before other car companies started catching on the electric vehicle, and in 1997, Toyota introduced its Prius hybrid. But Anderson, and central Indiana, still is home to some of the premier electric vehicle technology, said Wylam, who helped develop the EV1.

“The stuff that they made historically pretty much faded away and have gone somewhere else, but there’s a new level of electrifying cars now with these hybrid power trains,” he said.