Your Great-Grandfather May Have Owned One: The Electric Car
What a great article:
What would it take to build one of these today as a personal project?:
I don't suppose there are design drawings for these anywhere...?
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Great find! I would have loved the Porsche EV!
K
Yeah, not only was Porsche's first car electric his second was a hybrid with hub mounted motors! A plug in hybrid at that, with a range of 40 miles on batteries alone (that should sound familiar to those watching the Chevy Volt) All back in 1898.
Wow, it's amazing to think that back then they were proceeding along the same thought processes that we're "rediscovering" today. There's no doubt in my mind that gasoline was important for widespread adoption and use (especially when oil was trading at far less than $1 per BARREL and environmental concerns weren't fully understood). However, it's sad to see the later part of that time-line with the false starts towards electric being thwarted by big business favoring profit over progress.
I urge you all who are interested in this to get and read this book:-
Anyway.. could we build one of those horseless carriages today? Where's the air bags, safety restraints, etc? Mebbe you could build one as an NEV and thereby avoid a lot of the safety requirements. That might be cool as a novelty.
What would it take to build one of these today as a personal project?:
I don't suppose there are design drawings for these anywhere...?
Yep. There are plans for replica horseless carriages. In fact, there is quit a strong group of hobbyists building them. Here is a link to one of the groups selling plans:
www.horselesscarriagereplicas.com/
All that is needed is to add an electric drive to the replica. Check this out...really nice work!:
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=21148956
I urge you all who are interested in this to get and read this book:-
Thanks for the recommendation! I just ordered it. Should make for an interesting read.
Germany has never had a lot of oil. Thats why in WWII the oil fields of Romania were so fiercely defended. Rudolf Diesels new factory engine was shown at the 1900 Paris Worlds fair using peanut oil (bio-diesel?). Henry Fords Model-T could run on Ethanol (home-made by the farmers).
Also in WWII, the Japanese used rice-ethanol to fuel their aircraft during the last months of the war. Germany had a list of fuels and oxidizers to use in their rockets (depending on what was available that week) but the majority of V2 missiles used ethanol from...Bavarian potatoes.
Just found this, Studebaker made EV's, who'd a thunk it?:
http://patentpending.blogs.com/patent_pending_blog/2005/10/the_studebaker_.html
Studebaker started out making horse wagons in the 1800's, then for a short while they made EV's before moving on to gasoline cars.
The 1896 "Riker Electric" EV:
http://patentpending.blogs.com/patent_pending_blog/2006/04/the_first_ameri.html
I've got some EV history links on 7gen.com:-
http://www.7gen.com/website-categories/electric-vehicle-history
http://www.7gen.com/product/electric-vehicle-books/24362-electric-and-hybrid-cars-history
http://www.7gen.com/website/electric-vehicle-history/24345-ev-archive-stanford-univ
http://www.7gen.com/website/electric-vehicle-history/24343-history-early-electric-cars
http://www.7gen.com/website/electric-vehicle-history/24342-early-electric
http://www.7gen.com/website/electric-vehicle-history/some-ev-history/1483
And again, the book I mentioned above (Internal Combustion) goes into a lot of details about the early struggle between EV and gas driven vehicles.
Just found this, Studebaker made EV's, who'd a thunk it?:
http://patentpending.blogs.com/patent_pending_blog/2005/10/the_studebaker_.html
Studebaker started out making horse wagons in the 1800's, then for a short while they made EV's before moving on to gasoline cars.
And they actually continued experimenting with electric vehicles all the way until they stopped full scale production. In fact, the last time I was at the Studebaker museum in South Bend, IN they had different electric vehicles in the collection from children size toy cars to full size, late model prototypes.
Wouldn't be cool if someone resurrected Avanti and used their facilities to produce an electric car? The facilities have been mothballed since earlier this year.
I'm betting this time around EV's will make a dent in the auto market.
I think the Tesla is on the right track, build a car that outperforms other sports cars and you will have auto enthuses beating your door down trying to buy them. It only makes sense, who can afford to pay for what it costs to build a first rate EV, other then guys spending big bucks on super high performance cars. Then it's only time till the technology comes to a wider market.
If I only could afford a 100 KWh lithium battery :)
Deron.
1932 Dutch electric bicycle?
http://flickr.com/photos/9623863@N04/2088907136
Fat tires, front suspension, double gear reduction (two chains with intermediate jackshaft) looks like 4 batteries (48V?)
And here I was thinking this was a brilliant new idea!
i just happened to randomly come across this in the June 1975 issue of Popular Science
and an electric bike from the What's New section of May 1979
also in the whats new of this issue
once i started searching through back issues i ended up finding a ton of interesting old electric vehicle articles
Great find! I would have loved the Porsche EV!
K
Working on a Piaggio Boxer (mo-ped) EV conversion: http://gpsy.com/ev