EV's in History: some examples at the Henry Ford Museum

[harrisonpatm]

We have a lot of topics and threads regarding the potential of EV automobiles and what may or may not happen in the future. I thought it might be interesting, relevant, informative and/or helpful to have a look at what has happened in the past. What worked, what didn't, what got tried before and how it was received.

I live quite close to Dearborn, Michigan and have visited the Henry Ford Museum most of my childhood on a regular basis (critique Ford all you want, I don't think he was a saint either, but this is one of the best musuems in the country, btw). Now an adult with some young kids, I'm often visiting with them, and of course different things interest me now. I noticed there were a couple examples of historic electric cars. On this latest trip I thought I'd take a pic of all the ones there, and it was rather surprising to see how many!

Some of them are either expected or boring. I get why some creators would want to put the Prius in there, but the are still rather common even today.


A neat example of a Bolt that was used as a self-driving prototype. Note that this is from 2016, when hopes were high for the future of what self-driving could be. The reality has sunk in rather quickly for most people (a great example of why I thought it would be nice to have a thread about past EVs).



I waS pleased to see an EV1, famous from the film Who Killed the Electric Car?



An interesting example from the not-too-distant past, one of which I've even seen on my local classifieds for someone who would want to refurbish it, a 1980 ComutaCar




Those were all the ones I could find from semi recent history. But there are plenty of old examples too [continued on next post]

 

[harrisonpatm]

Starting at near to the beginning of automotive history, I know this one's not electric, but I thought it was relevant that literally one of the first "automobiles" was not gas powered, but rather steam, an 1865 Roper carriage.



Don't worry though, the museum's oldest example of an electric car was right next to it, a 1901 Columbia Victoria.


Check out the battery box and the driver's seat (in the back), or as close of a pic that I could get. As well as the motor(s)


As well as these neat examples of volt- and ammeters featured in early cars



A very cool find, a 1900 electric delivery truck. Even today electric is not the best application for cargo, but still cool to see some people were at least trying



Obviously there are plenty examples, more than I can provide, of EVs that failed, in this case a designer that really wanted to make EVs but ended up designing gas cars: an 1896 electric trike by a guy named Riker



Maybe I shouldn't have been surprised to learn this as history has a tendency to repeat itself, but the Prius was far from the first hybrid car. Here's a 1916 Woods hybrid coupe, which the museum is showing as an example of technology that perhaps we are better able to implement today (in cars like the Prius) then we were in the past.

 

[harrisonpatm]

I saved my favorite for last. Clara was Henry Ford's wife, the father of mass automobile production. Did she drive a Model T? Nope! Here's the very car that she drove the most, a 1914 Detroit Electric model 47. Not even a Ford car, a different company's altogether!



Ford even bought more than 1 electric car for himself and Clara, as evidenced by this cool letter from a car dealership stating how cheap the maintenance was on one of his purchases. As well as asking Ford to plug his business more.


Obviously there are more historic electric cars than these. Anybody else want to share history or discuss EVs of the past?

 

[amberwolf]

IIRC there are some non-bike EVs over in the Horses of Iron thread, too:

Horses of Iron

Caution: Gas vehicles... This is just for those thinking of a next life as steampunk. A Flickr "group" w/pics of very early 20th century motorcycles (styling): http://www.flickr.com/groups/846193@N24/pool/ tks

endless-sphere.com

but I haven't gone thru it in a long time

Somewhere here there is a thread on the Baker Electric, and another I've forgotten the name of by Ferdinand Porsche.

If you like you can copy the info you find in those here (I would but am too wiped out right now to find it and I'll probably forget later )

 

[neptronix]

Dude, what a great post, thanks for showing us this stuff

 

[PaPaSteve]

A great museum indeed.
To see it all takes more than one day, which unfortunately was all the time we had.
The Wright Brothers building was a highlight.

Other car museums to put on a "must see" list are :

Museum of American Speed in Lincoln NE

BarberMuseum in Birmingham AL