An Electric car from The early 1900's

Saw this tonight on youtube . An electric car from soo long ago. What a beauty.

Steve.

Owen Magnetic car

Wonderful car, and a great presentation

Thanks for the link, Steve

MichaelG.

Well worth the watch, thanks.

David

In a similar era I believe Ferdinand Porsche made an electric car with a motor in each hub.

There were many electric cars and small lorries built in the 1900s, in Britain, France and the USA - but of course soon rendered largely obsolete by the development of the petrol engine of increasing reliability, smaller bulk and weight, longer range and simple, rapid refuelling.

My copy of Modern Electrical Engineering, Vol 5, devotes an entire chapter to them, detailing the various and ingenious motor designs, gives the following nugget in explaining their " somewhat meteoric rise ", especially "among the wealthier classes " :

The unreliability and noise of early i.c. engines was the main factor, but in London a regulation

" ... prohibited the use of the petrol-driven vehicles in the royal parks, but permitted entry of the silent and odourless electric cars. " [1]

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One of the books' exemplars, illustrated by a re-touched photo probably from the manufacturer's own advertising, was the Lloyd 3-ton lorry, built by the Bremen-based North German Lloyd Steamship Company. This, or the model photographed at least, was in outline rather like the open-cab, bluff-fronted steam-wagons by Thorneycroft, Hindley (1908) etc.. Of its artillery-pattern, (solid-?) rubber-tyred wheels, the Ackermann-steered front were the powered ones, each with its own motor suspended from the hub.

The writer describes the Great Eastern Railway tested a Lloyd for a week on goods deliveries around Ipswich, which has hills up to about 1 in 12. They quoted a mean 7.4 A/h per mile: I wonder how that would compare with a modern version in a fair test, given that it would still take the same energy to move the same gross mass from rest to the same speed - and to get it up Mt. Ipswich; i.e. a comparison of overall efficiency.

The book does compare the Lloyd with similar-capacity lorries using rear-wheel chain drive, ascribing the Lloyd's better efficiency, by about 8:7, to it using regenerative braking.

We also learn a very similar vehicle to the Lloyd, named 'The Orwell' " is now being built by Messrs. Ransomes, Sims & Jeffries Ltd., of Ipswich. "

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Some makers went further, putting the motor within the wheel, notably the 'Cedes'. These British products in 6,15 and 25HP sizes, of claimed efficiencies c.80%, were intended for electric buses and similar heavy vehicles.

Over in France, Paris City Council's municipal sanitary services operated 100 of the Fram equivalent to the Cedes. The Fram is rather tantalisingly described as a sort of forecarriage that can be attached to any form of vehicle. It's not clear, but I read that as not articulated but a front-end unit bolted rigidly to a finish-builder's chassis.

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In the States, the impressively-named 'Couple-gear Freight-wheel Company', of Grand Rapids, Michigan, developed an ingenious and compact wheel whose motor lay across the space between two felloes. Each felloe carried a bevel gear meshed with a pinion on its respective end of the armature shaft. The motor was placed slightly askew to allow this arrangement.

The CgFw Co. also built a lorry with powered wheels all round, its motors supplied from a dynamo driven by a petrol engine...

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So city-centre vehicular noise and fumes, battery-electrics, hybrids, regenerative braking.... Nowt new under the Sun, it appears.

[1] Modern Electrical Engineering, Vol.5., ed. Magnus Maclean, M.A. D.Sc.,., pub. The Gresham Publishing Company ltd., London. Date not given but the above and other evidence suggests the 19-teens.

Absolutely amazing car, I am not a car nut, but I defiantly would love one of those. Pootling down the Lincolnshire country roads to the shops would be a pleasure.

Interesting stuff

He found it in Norway...

There is an electric car of similar vintage in the stables at Tatton Park, Cheshire. I don't know the make

Edited By roy entwistle on 23/04/2021 09:22:57

Interesting Steve, thanks for posting the link. It’s rather ironic that millions have been spent developing complicated and expensive electro mechanical drive systems for cars when the answer has been staring them in the face for 100 years. Diesel electric trains of course are a proven technology still in use today. Some submarines used Diesel engines to run electric motors and charge batteries. Not a success it seems but in 1942 a Petrol Electric Tank was developed by Porsche.

**LINK**

" Some submarines used Diesel engines to run electric motors and charge batteries. Not a success it seems ... "

Did you mean the submarine or the Porsche tank was not a success?

If the boats (for some reason RN submariners don't call them ships), then on the contrary.

Certainly from the 1930s on until the development of nuclear-powered craft, and I think still for smaller submarines used by some navies, virtually all submarines used that Diesel and battery combination as the only practicable one, and very successfully with it. It was either/or. The diesel engines for surface or just-submerged cruising and to recharge the batteries; the electric motors used for fully-submerged propulsion.

In a war the boat would be very vulnerable to attack if caught entirely on the surface, but cruising just below the water with only the air inlet, exhaust and periscope above, made them much harder to spot.

The biggest danger to the crew, short of actually being sunk, was of sea-water flooding the batteries, usually by battle damage. The salt would react with the sulphuric acid to evolve chlorine.

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The modern electric car is as complicated as it because modern vehicle designers are a product of their time: inured to rendering the fundamentally simple as difficult and complicated as possible in the confusion between progress and improvement. Some is the never-ending quest to use every Joule as usefully as possible, as true in engineering 200 years ago as it now; but these days motorists expect cars to be high-performance wagons rammed full of 'electronickery' because they can be.

Still means one couple I know dare not use the heater on long Winter night trips in their ell-electric whizzo-mobile!

It is not generally recognised, but at the end of the nineteenth century and early twentieth there were more electric cars built than IC engined cars. Particularly in America. The electric cars were easier to drive, needed less maintenance and were particularly aimed at the female population who were not capable of understanding how to drive anything else. (From period literature, Not my opinion in these woke days). Believe it or not there were even coin in the slot street chargers available in major cities.

The IC engined cars (petrol) in those days were very prone to breakdown and needed major attention and engine rebuilds etc. every two thousand miles or so. Petrol wasn't leaded so pre ignition was a major issue and explains why they used low compression ratios and large cylinders in banks of six or twelve. Lubrication oil also was primitive and not very effective hence low rev. counts.

The Achilles heal of the electric car was of course the short range (lead acid battery technology) which was even more of an issue in a big country like the US.

The first world war was the turning point in IC engine design but this wasn't aimed at cars it was aimed at aircraft engines. In order to get better power to weight they needed high compression ratios and to do that they found adding lead to the fuel would control it. Better bearings, tolerances, steels and lubricating oils meant the IC engine could come of age and replace the electric and steam cars. The steam cars held on until the early 1920's. After that it was all IC.

It wasn't only car builders who could be condescending, though they were products of their times and societies. And not only to women, often called the "fair sex" then.

E.S. Hindley & Sons' steam-wagon catalogue reckoned the vehicle " so simple any man of ordinary intelligence could learn to drive it in a few hours ". The back page of the booklet bears a photo of one of their "Colonial" pattern under-type wagons photographed in India, piled high with cotton bales, and driven, we are proudly told, "by natives". That was in 1908.

The photo that inspired my interest in the marque was taken in Gillingham (Dorset, not the Kent one), not far from the factory. It shows a wagon dressed for the town's carnival, stacked with a mountain of coal that a banner states is to be given to the local poor. The scene is a little social commentary by the dress and deportment of the several men present; from the owner, a local businessman resplendent in three-piece suit encircling his well-to-do tum, down to one of the Lowry-slim labouring classes peering shyly round from behind the lorry.

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Range could still be a problem in the USA and other continents; and possibly even in more compact but sparsely populated regions like the Highlands of Scotland. Looking at an atlas, I wonder how far inland before re-charging even the best electric cars produced now reach from one of the American West Coast towns lying below the mountain-range. I am sure battery and motor development will continue for a while yet but I suspect a law of diminishing returns will enter at some point, simply from the basic physics of starting, accelerating and steadily moving a given mass at given speed against a combination of gravity and very variable resistances.

I can remember steam wagons carrying cotton bales to the local mills before the war

My how things have changed

Ford’s new version of the F150 pick-up is featured in today’s News:

[quote]

When truck owners learned of additional benefits, such as the ability for the Lightning to power electric tools on job sites, appliances at camp sites, or even entire homes at disaster sites, these dedicated truck owners were sold, reports Palmer.

Here are the numbers that have proved to be catnip for the 200,000 people who’ve placed orders for the Lightning: The dual motors deliver a stunning 775 lb.-ft. of torque through all four wheels. The truck’s standard battery packs 98 kilowatt-hours of juice, which is similar to the capacity of a Tesla Model S. The optional extended-range battery carries 131 kWh of energy. The dual front/rear electric motors combine to produce 452 horsepower in trucks using the standard battery, and the same motors put out 580 horsepower with the extended range battery, because the bigger battery pack can provide more power to the motors.

[/quote]

MichaelG.

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Ref. __ https://www.popsci.com/technology/ford-f-150-lightning-review/

Edited By Michael Gilligan on 12/05/2022 08:52:20

580HP " because the bigger battery pack can provide more power" ? Same motors so presumably same voltage and maximum current. More capacity yes....

So how much capacity, or more usefully, what range?

I ploughed through the review, irritated by the site's needless clutter.

A vehicle like a pick-up is designed for heavy load-lugging, directly or in a trailer. (I don't know if Americans have their form of the 'Chelsea Tractor' motorist!) Loading it by towing a caravan, the writer found a maximum around 150 miles - hardly significant in a continental-sized country. Even the unladen test figures are not that great, not for long-distance trips in a land with huge sparsely-settled areas and sometimes harsh weather conditions

The review does not seem to quote re-charging times from typical public chargers, in the car's own country. Also,I don't know how widely available are public chargers in the USA - they seem thinly-scattered in the UK with much shorter inter-city distances.

Perhaps that blue box with the big handle is the pick-up's stand-by generator!

As for its other claim, apparently that of using it as a stand-by power-pack, that is all very well until you go to drive it home! "Just keep windin' that ther Goddam' handle, Junior! "

A friend in the building trade tells me there is so far no suitable battery equivalent worth considering for his work van, a Vauxhall Vivaro I think. I gather that as a self-employed trader with many domestic customers, his driving range varies widely from day to day; sometimes around 50 or 60 miles each way, not counting detours to suppliers, and can involve quite heavy loads.

Then there was Tilling - Stevens ! Petrol engine, electric drive ! When the second World War started you took a TS wagon put a searchlight on the back, throw a switch and now the engine drives the light ! A few years ago one night the world was lit by a earie glow that had a slight flicker, I ran some distance to where I guessed the source of this amazing spectacle was - It was one of these vehicles WORKING ! I asked the range of the light 7 MILES- some torch !

My interest was more than passing - My mother had commanded a searchlight unit round London during WW2 and had the honour or being one of the 2 units to form the V over St Pauls on VE Night, she had many interesting tales to tell. Hand cranking a 4 pot Lister diesel on a cold night, there was NO starter motor,   Etc !Noel

Edited By noel shelley on 12/05/2022 10:39:46

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An interesting [but possibly erroneous] presumption ^^^

I feel pretty confident that the bigger battery pack would have lower internal resistance, and therefore be capable of supplying more current >>> more power.

MichaelG.

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Ref. **LINK**

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_resistance

Ah, by resistances in parallel? I can see that likely.

MichaelG.

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P.S. __ There’s a bit more detail about the performance in this Bloomberg feature: ,**LINK**

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-04-14/2022-ford-f-150-lightning-electric-truck-takes-on-tesla