In the local newspaper last night was an article about a popular electric runabout of the day March 9, 1911. A local fellow, H.T. Terry, had the courage to purchase the coach from the Anderson Carriage Co. of Detroit, MI. It was powered by the then new Edison storage battery and was advertised at 75-100 miles per charge. Later models factory tested at 211 miles according to reports. Now I am sure top speed was around 20 mph - but what a trick! Then comes J.D. Reckafella (Standard Oil) and the rest is history.
Thats a slap in the face of modern American hybrid/electric auto industry. Couldn't beat 5 cents per gallon gas though.
It is pretty impressive, but there is a LOT of safety & comfort features that weren't available back then, as well as the fact that while it's top speed was around 20 MPH, it's acceleration might not have even been close to a comparable modern vehicle. Batteries back then really didn't last that long, the quality was really hit-or-miss, and in some cases, were pretty dangerous. It doesn't mean we won't achieve that level of performance, however - we advance every day, so it probably won't be long before we're looking back at the Leaf, Volt, and Prius musing at how archaic they were to what we have -now-
At 20mph, who needs safety features? While I prefer to remain optimistic, there's nothing automatic or guaranteed about scientific and technological advancements. In some ways, we've come far in 100 years, and in others, not so much. It's nice to think that some day soon we'll all be laughing at how primitive the Prius "was". Then again, the way things appear to be going, we could be living in them.
Really, if you took a Nissan leaf, stripped its safety away, climate control, etc. basically reduced it to a frame (as this car certainly would have been), stripped its power down, and gave it a top speed of 20 mph its range would be many hundreds of miles, I'm sure. Still it is interesting that we have first consumer electric cars now (not including the dinky ones) and 100 years ago electric seemed a contender, fighting out with gas and steam.
Anderson Carriage Co., Anderson Electric Car Co., Detroit Electric Car Co., William C. Anderson, Anderson Body - Coachbult.com [ame=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detroit_Electric]Detroit Electric - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame] Detroit Electric dedicated to the early electric car and my 1914 model 43 SEMA pictures Detroit Electric Vintage Electric Car - a knol by Bernardus Mettes# The last link lists some specs. Owners of this car didn't need a driving coat & goggles. It was marketed to women & the affluent/wealthy. At $3250 with the optional Ni-Fe batteries it was 6X the cost of Ford's Model T. A hundred years later Tesla markets an electric car that also gets ~200 miles on a charge to the affluent/wealthy at 6X the price of an ICE powered car. Some things don't change.
The same as it would well away from a Nissan Leaf. The mass of a Leaf is too small to measurably alter weight in its vicinity. Tom
