EV's of old
- Thread starter buster
- Start date
I don't know about the others but the Sears Motor Buggy was not electric powered. IJS
interesting...
www.caranddriver.com
a clearer picture shows ....nothing to buy but gasoline, so prolly an engine in there, but cool nonetheless!
The Electric Car’s History Goes Back Further Than You Think
The first electric cars appeared long before the earliest gas autos, and the history of electric cars is littered with innovative takes on four-wheeled transit.
www.caranddriver.com
See the car that Sears used to sell
The Sears Motor Buggy was far from cutting edge, even in 1908, but that wasn't the idea.
money.cnn.com
a clearer picture shows ....nothing to buy but gasoline, so prolly an engine in there, but cool nonetheless!
And they're still trying to get them to catch on.
These were intended for city use by relatively wealthy people, especially women as the pictures show. The competition was horses, early gas cars, or riding with the rabble on a streetcar. In that market they were viable. The early gas cars were difficult to start and required mechanical skill by the owner for more or less constant repairs. An electric was the only option to get in push the button and drive, as long as you remembered to charge it.
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Very evident they really looked like horse drawn carriages at the beginning. Reminds me of how difficult it is for designers to decide what the front of an electric car should look like now that it doesn’t need a grill.
I like these old pictures of yesteryear, some wheels were still wood while others were wire spoked. One could easily fix their own flat tire too.
They were promoted as a lady's car. Easy to start, easy to drive, plug it in at home. Probably had a very short range (10 miles perhaps). But people didn't go very far in those days anyway. Even in the late '50s/early '60s a 65 mile trip to the local small city was at most an annual event in our family. We traveled to the big city (160 miles) twice in the first 10 years of my life.
Dealing with lead acid batteries would have been painful of course. Seeing as they would have been deep discharged regularly, those batteries probably did have a short life. And there was no AAA/CAA to pull you onto a flat bed and take you home if you ran out of charge.
They just needed time travel and a "Musk" visitor to have made them a serious option during the intervening period. Whew, maybe he is a time traveller from some time in the future.
Dealing with lead acid batteries would have been painful of course. Seeing as they would have been deep discharged regularly, those batteries probably did have a short life. And there was no AAA/CAA to pull you onto a flat bed and take you home if you ran out of charge.
They just needed time travel and a "Musk" visitor to have made them a serious option during the intervening period. Whew, maybe he is a time traveller from some time in the future.
And you got a lot of practice fixing flats too. Until the last few decades, flat tires were common. And in those early days a regular event.
No, I don't believe so. Fuel powered vehicles are still king, and will remain more capable on into the distant future.
What is true is that EV's have become modernized.