A Manhattan street where most of the cars driving are electric. Far from being just a vision of the future, this scene also borrows from the past. In the 1890s, more electric cars were sold in New York than their thermal equivalents. Sales largely due to the world’s first electric taxi company and its flagship: the Electrobat.
Quiet, clean and easy to drive, the electric car of the time was not only seen in opposition to its thermal cousin. Above all, it represented a tremendous advance compared to horses. The approximately 150,000 horses trotting around New York then released nearly 10 kilograms of manure per day.
The Electrobat emerged as the first commercially viable electric vehicle at a time when electricity, which was beginning to become widespread, was seen as magic. Designed by Philadelphians Henry Morris and Pedro Salom in 1894, the Electrobat weighed just over a ton, was powered by a lead-acid battery, could travel 25 miles on a charge, and reached a top speed of 15.5 miles per hour.
But perhaps the most impressive part is the battery change. The two engineers have invented a system that allows mechanics, like Formula 1 mechanics, to replace the Electrobat’s battery in three minutes. That’s already faster than in the 21st century.e century. Now imagine that the battery we are talking about weighs 450 kilograms and is lifted using hydraulic systems and an overhead crane…
Battery weighed down by financial scandal
Henry Morris and Pedro Salom’s invention quickly gained notoriety, especially among high society. Rather than selling their electric cars, they decided to rent them out. The taxi fleet exploded. From a dozen vehicles when the company was founded in 1897, the duo had more than a hundred in 1899.
It must be said that with its acceleration and silence, the Electrobat is the ideal urban car. A little too much, even. Jacob German thus entered history, in May 1899, as the first motorist to be stopped for speeding – at 19 kilometers per hour. More sadly and a few weeks later, Henry Bliss became the first pedestrian killed by an automobile; he did not hear the Electrobat coming. A panel pays tribute to him near Central Park.
Neither this tragedy nor the disrupted habits stop the success of the Electric Vehicle Company, the new entity of Morris and Salom. Backed by many investors, it attacks Philadelphia, Chicago, Boston to become the first car manufacturer in the country.
But this expansion soon proved untenable. Not only were the non-New York branches of the company poorly managed, but in late 1899 the press revealed that the company had obtained a loan fraudulently. Investors fled, the stock collapsed, and the company went bankrupt three years later.
The fracas caused by the collapse of the country’s leading company in its field was a terrible advertisement for the electric car. To make matters worse, a fire destroyed a significant portion of the taxi fleet. Then the banking panic of 1907 dealt the final blow to the industry. At the same time, businessman Harry Allen arrived from France with 65 Darracq petrol taxis. He would own 700 of them by the following year.
“What killed the electric taxi was not really the idea, the technology or the business strategyconcludes Dan Albert, author of Are We There Yet? (“Are we there yet?” in French), a book tracing the history of the American automobile. This is the corrupt behavior of the dealers of the time.”
The United States then embraces its rich (and polluting) culture of the thermal car and the freedom of the roads. It will be necessary to wait until 2022 and the beginning of an ecological conscience to see electric taxis again in New York.
Source: www.slate.fr
