The Electrobat was one of the first electric automobiles. It was designed and built in 1894 by mechanical engineer Henry G. Morris and chemist Pedro G. Salom in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. [1]
The Electrobat was one of the first electric automobiles. It was designed and built in 1894 by mechanical engineer Henry G. Morris and chemist Pedro G. Salom in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. [1]
Morris and Salom had backgrounds in battery-powered streetcars and, as the battery streetcar business was fading, they teamed up to make battery road vehicles. Their Electrobat received a patent on August 31, 1894. Built like a small version of a battery streetcar, it was a slow, heavy, impractical vehicle with steel tires to support its immense, 1,600-pound lead battery. [2] An improved version, the Electrobat II, entered production in 1895.
In 1896, the pair founded the Morris & Salom Electric Carriage and Wagon Company. [3] [1]
Subsequent versions were lighter and had pneumatic tires, with bodies built at the Caffrey Carriage Company in Camden, New Jersey. These cars steered by their rear wheels and had two 1.5- horsepower (1.1 kW) motors that propelled them 25 miles (40 km) per charge at 20 mph (32 km/h). [1] Morris and Salom went on to build about a dozen Hansom cabs based on this vehicle, to compete with the horse-drawn cabs then in service in New York City; they operated in New York, Boston, and elsewhere. [3]
In 1897, they sold the cabs and their concept to Isaac L. Rice, who reincorporated the enterprise as the Electric Vehicle Company, which later became part of Albert Augustus Pope's empire. [3]
A tram is a rail vehicle that travels on tramway tracks on public urban streets; some include segments on segregated right-of-way. The tramlines or networks operated as public transport are called tramways or simply trams/streetcars. Many recently built tramways use the contemporary term light rail.
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Development of the automobile started in 1672 with the invention of the first steam-powered vehicle, which led to the creation of the first steam-powered automobile capable of human transportation, built by Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot in 1769. Inventors began to branch out at the start of the 19th century, creating the de Rivaz engine, one of the first internal combustion engines, and an early electric motor. Samuel Brown later tested the first industrially applied internal combustion engine in 1826.
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Electric Vehicle Company was an American holding company that operated from 1897 to 1907 and was an early manufacturer of battery-powered automobiles.
Columbia was an American brand of automobiles produced by a group of companies in the United States. They included the Pope Manufacturing Company of Hartford, Connecticut, the Electric Vehicle Company, and an entity of brief existence in 1899, the Columbia Automobile Company.
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A car, or an automobile, is a motor vehicle with wheels. Most definitions of cars say that they run primarily on roads, seat one to eight people, have four wheels, and mainly transport people, not cargo.
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The Chicago Times-Herald race was the first automobile race held in the United States. Sponsored by the Chicago Times-Herald, the race was held in Chicago in 1895 among six motorized vehicles: four cars and two motorcycles. It was won by Frank Duryea's Motorized Wagon. The race created considerable publicity for the motocycle, which had been introduced in the United States only two years earlier.
The Egger-Lohner C.2 Phaeton, erroneously called Porsche P1, is an electric vehicle built by Egger-Lohner. It is the first vehicle that Ferdinand Porsche somewhat contributed to. The vehicle resembles a horse-drawn carriage with an electrical motor attached to it. Approximately 4 were built.
The Bersey Electric Cab was an early electric-powered vehicle and the first electric taxi cab in London. Developed by Walter Bersey the vehicles reportedly had a top speed of 12 mph (19 km/h) and could carry two passengers. An initial service of 12 cabs began on 19 August 1897 and a total of 77 were built, with a maximum of 75 in service at once. They were initially popular and were nicknamed "hummingbirds" for the sound they made and their distinctive livery. The vehicles suffered badly from wear in service owing to their heavy weight. This damaged the batteries and tyres, which were expensive to replace, and made their operation unprofitable. The cabs were withdrawn in August 1899 and electric cabs did not return to the streets of London until the Nissan Dynamo was introduced in October 2019.
Walter Charles Bersey was a British electrical engineer who developed electric-driven vehicles in the late 19th-century. He developed a new form of dry battery that enabled him to build, in 1888, an electric bus that he ran successfully for at least 3,000 miles (4,800 km). In March 1894 he built an electric parcel van that was used in central London and later developed electric private cars. Bersey also developed an electric cab design, 75 of which were built and used by the London Electrical Cab Company to run a service between 1897 and 1899. They were not financially successful owing to noise and vibration leading to excessive damage to tyres and batteries. In his later career Bersey developed designs for internal combustion engine cars and during the First World War served with the Royal Flying Corps and Royal Air Force.
