Does anyone know how long BEVs have been around?

Cyberman

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A lot of folks think Elon Musk invented the electric car. Others, a little bit older, remember seeing odd wedge-shaped cars in the 70's that instantly identified them as electric cars. I remember my Dad, the Walking Encyclopedia, telling me how when he was a kid in the late 1920's he would see an army of battery electric delivery trucks running around New Jersey. They were quieter, didn't smell like exhaust, and worked great, but fell out of favor when super-cheap oil was discovered in Texas and elsewhere. So at the beginning of the 20th century, it wasn't uncommon to come across a ton of BEVs running the streets. The truth is, the first small-scale electric car was made in 1828. WTF? They've been around almost 200 years? How did I miss that all this time? Now you know.
In fact, the first hybrid electric vehicle was made by Porsche... in 1901.
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Crissa

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Yeah, battery float trucks were a big thing until the 1970s, even. Back when local delivery of milk was commonplace.

The problem was battery technology: So none of these had great range.

But electric cars are simpler than gasoline ones. That's why they came first (there were steam ones before that).

-Crissa
 

HaulingAss

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A lot of folks think Elon Musk invented the electric car. Others, a little bit older, remember seeing odd wedge-shaped cars in the 70's that instantly identified them as electric cars. I remember my Dad, the Walking Encyclopedia, telling me how when he was a kid in the late 1920's he would see an army of battery electric delivery trucks running around New Jersey. They were quieter, didn't smell like exhaust, and worked great, but fell out of favor when super-cheap oil was discovered in Texas and elsewhere. So at the beginning of the 20th century, it wasn't uncommon to come across a ton of BEVs running the streets. The truth is, the first small-scale electric car was made in 1828. WTF? They've been around almost 200 years? How did I miss that all this time? Now you know.
In fact, the first hybrid electric vehicle was made by Porsche... in 1901.
Well, I would have guessed 1880-something. Didn't know about any in 1828! Pretty cool!

But, come on, some people believe Musk invented electric cars?? Maybe if you're 10 years old and don't read much! What about the Nissan Leaf (and before that, GM's EV-1)? There were plenty of other EV's in the modern era but they didn't have the power and range people demanded. They were thought of as glorified golf-carts, something that fearful oil companies encouraged.

Tesla changed all that. Now they are thought of as fast cars!
 

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Yeah, battery float trucks were a big thing until the 1970s, even. Back when local delivery of milk was commonplace.

The problem was battery technology: So none of these had great range.

But electric cars are simpler than gasoline ones. That's why they came first (there were steam ones before that).

-Crissa
When I was in high school, before the GMC EV-1 or Nissan Leaf, I had an after school job loading trucks at a soft-drink bottling plant. There were two forklifts in the warehouse, a propane powered one and a battery-electric. Forklifts have large steel or lead weights on the rear to counter the load. The electric forklift had the lead acid batteries as a counter-weight (plus some extra steel hanging off the end). These things were considerably narrower than a pallet but had gobs of power and could lift a full pallet of bottled soft-drinks 20 feet high.

We all preferred the electric forklift because it was so much more fun to drive (and very quick too). Every Wednesday we would wash the concrete floor with soap and water and big squeegees. All the grown-ups had gone home for the evening so after we soaped up the floor real good we would get in the forklifts and see who could do the best brodies and slides. The momentum of all that weight coupled with the hard non-pneumatic tires and soapy floors resulted in some epic slides. Fortunately, we never crashed into stacks of the product or tipped the forklifts over but we had some close calls.

The propane one had a gearshift, a clutch and multiple gears but the electric one could leave it in the dust. Every night we would plug the EV one in and it would be ready to go by the next day. The propane one required refilling and no one wanted to do that. Ever since then I've wanted my own electric car. Now I have two and they are far better than I ever imagined. ?
 

Crissa

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The propane ones were cheaper and more water-resistant, but...

...I remember one job I had to walk a few blocks to and in the industrial park across the street there was a warehouse and one morning I watched as a guy fought with his propane forklift he'd punctured the tank on. At least it was in the open, but I was like, 'well, I'm not going to hang around here...'

-Crissa
 


firsttruck

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-----------------------------

1914 Detroit Electric Model 47 Brougham, Personal Car of Clara Ford
Clara Ford, wife of Henry Ford, drove this Detroit Electric. In the years before World War I many women chose electric cars because they started instantly without hand cranking and had no difficult-to-shift transmission. The superintendent of the Detroit Electric factory employed his daughter, Lillian Reynolds, to sell to women -- including Clara Ford, who drove this car into the 1930s.
https://www.thehenryford.org/collections-and-research/digital-collections/artifact/209957/


Henry Ford’s Wife Wouldn’t Drive Ford Model T, Kept Her Electric Car
By Zachary Shahan
Published April 11, 2014
https://cleantechnica.com/2014/04/11/henry-fords-wife-wouldnt-drive-model-t-kept-electric-car/


-----------------------------

A proud Clara Ford with her industrialist husband
https://fordeurope.blogspot.com/2019/02/a-proud-clara-ford-with-her.html

.....
Clara was incredibly supportive of Henry and his ideas. He called her his “great believer” because she was the only person who believed in his idea of a motorised carriage, however, she was headstrong too, and refused to drive the Model T Ford that Henry gave her, preferring her 1914 Detroit Electric, which she considered simpler, cleaner, safer, and nicer to drive.


-----------------------------


Electric car history
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_car

.....
The first practical electric cars were produced in the 1880s. In November 1881, Gustave Trouvé presented an electric car at the Exposition internationale d'Électricité de Paris. In 1884, over 20 years before the Ford Model T, Thomas Parker built a practical production electric car in Wolverhampton using his own specially designed high-capacity rechargeable batteries, although the only documentation is a photograph from 1895 (see below). The Flocken Elektrowagen of 1888 was designed by German inventor Andreas Flocken and is regarded as the first real electric car.

.....
Electric cars were among the preferred methods for automobile propulsion in the late 19th and early 20th century, providing a level of comfort and ease of operation that could not be achieved by the gasoline cars of the time. The electric vehicle stock peaked at approximately 30,000 vehicles at the turn of the 20th century.

In 1897, electric cars found their first commercial use as taxis in Britain and the US. In London, Walter Bersey's electric cabs were the first self-propelled vehicles for hire at a time when cabs were horse-drawn. In New York City, a fleet of twelve hansom cabs and one brougham, based on the design of the Electrobat II, were part of a project funded in part by the Electric Storage Battery Company of Philadelphia. During the 20th century, the main manufacturers of electric vehicles in the US were Anthony Electric, Baker, Columbia, Anderson, Edison, Riker, Milburn, Bailey Electric, Detroit Electric and others. Unlike gasoline-powered vehicles, the electric ones were less noisy, and did not require gear changes.


-----------------------------


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

.....
In 1891, Ford became an engineer with the Edison Illuminating Company of Detroit. After his promotion to Chief Engineer in 1893, he had enough time and money to devote attention to his experiments on gasoline engines. These experiments culminated in 1896 with the completion of a self-propelled vehicle, which he named the Ford Quadricycle. He test-drove it on June 4. After various test drives, Ford brainstormed ways to improve the Quadricycle.


-----------------------------


Ford, Edison and the Cheap EV That Almost Was
That Henry Ford and Thomas Edison were good friends late in their lives is well-known. They camped together, presented each other with lavish gifts, even owned homes adjacent to each other. Many Ford enthusiasts also know Ford, when he first drove his Quadricycle on the streets of Detroit in 1896, worked for Edison at Detroit […]
Dan Strohl
2020 Jun 18
https://www.wired.com/2010/06/henry-ford-thomas-edison-ev/


.....
Thomas Edison built a battery-powered front-wheel-drive electric in 1895, and the industrialist owned some of the very expensive electric cars then in production.

.....
Henry Ford worked for Thomas Edison at Edison's Detroit Edison Illuminating Company.


*** in 2010 Ford Motor co said
Ford says it will invest $135 million in electric-car development and 10 to 25 percent of its fleet will be electrified in some way by 2020.
**** hah hah, in 2021 should anybody believe Ford again ?????
-----------------------------
 
OP
OP
Cyberman

Cyberman

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-----------------------------

1914 Detroit Electric Model 47 Brougham, Personal Car of Clara Ford
Clara Ford, wife of Henry Ford, drove this Detroit Electric. In the years before World War I many women chose electric cars because they started instantly without hand cranking and had no difficult-to-shift transmission. The superintendent of the Detroit Electric factory employed his daughter, Lillian Reynolds, to sell to women -- including Clara Ford, who drove this car into the 1930s.
https://www.thehenryford.org/collections-and-research/digital-collections/artifact/209957/


Henry Ford’s Wife Wouldn’t Drive Ford Model T, Kept Her Electric Car
By Zachary Shahan
Published April 11, 2014
https://cleantechnica.com/2014/04/11/henry-fords-wife-wouldnt-drive-model-t-kept-electric-car/


-----------------------------

A proud Clara Ford with her industrialist husband
https://fordeurope.blogspot.com/2019/02/a-proud-clara-ford-with-her.html

.....
Clara was incredibly supportive of Henry and his ideas. He called her his “great believer” because she was the only person who believed in his idea of a motorised carriage, however, she was headstrong too, and refused to drive the Model T Ford that Henry gave her, preferring her 1914 Detroit Electric, which she considered simpler, cleaner, safer, and nicer to drive.


-----------------------------


Electric car history
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_car

.....
The first practical electric cars were produced in the 1880s. In November 1881, Gustave Trouvé presented an electric car at the Exposition internationale d'Électricité de Paris. In 1884, over 20 years before the Ford Model T, Thomas Parker built a practical production electric car in Wolverhampton using his own specially designed high-capacity rechargeable batteries, although the only documentation is a photograph from 1895 (see below). The Flocken Elektrowagen of 1888 was designed by German inventor Andreas Flocken and is regarded as the first real electric car.

.....
Electric cars were among the preferred methods for automobile propulsion in the late 19th and early 20th century, providing a level of comfort and ease of operation that could not be achieved by the gasoline cars of the time. The electric vehicle stock peaked at approximately 30,000 vehicles at the turn of the 20th century.

In 1897, electric cars found their first commercial use as taxis in Britain and the US. In London, Walter Bersey's electric cabs were the first self-propelled vehicles for hire at a time when cabs were horse-drawn. In New York City, a fleet of twelve hansom cabs and one brougham, based on the design of the Electrobat II, were part of a project funded in part by the Electric Storage Battery Company of Philadelphia. During the 20th century, the main manufacturers of electric vehicles in the US were Anthony Electric, Baker, Columbia, Anderson, Edison, Riker, Milburn, Bailey Electric, Detroit Electric and others. Unlike gasoline-powered vehicles, the electric ones were less noisy, and did not require gear changes.


-----------------------------


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

.....
In 1891, Ford became an engineer with the Edison Illuminating Company of Detroit. After his promotion to Chief Engineer in 1893, he had enough time and money to devote attention to his experiments on gasoline engines. These experiments culminated in 1896 with the completion of a self-propelled vehicle, which he named the Ford Quadricycle. He test-drove it on June 4. After various test drives, Ford brainstormed ways to improve the Quadricycle.


-----------------------------


Ford, Edison and the Cheap EV That Almost Was
That Henry Ford and Thomas Edison were good friends late in their lives is well-known. They camped together, presented each other with lavish gifts, even owned homes adjacent to each other. Many Ford enthusiasts also know Ford, when he first drove his Quadricycle on the streets of Detroit in 1896, worked for Edison at Detroit […]
Dan Strohl
2020 Jun 18
https://www.wired.com/2010/06/henry-ford-thomas-edison-ev/


.....
Thomas Edison built a battery-powered front-wheel-drive electric in 1895, and the industrialist owned some of the very expensive electric cars then in production.

.....
Henry Ford worked for Thomas Edison at Edison's Detroit Edison Illuminating Company.


*** in 2010 Ford Motor co said
Ford says it will invest $135 million in electric-car development and 10 to 25 percent of its fleet will be electrified in some way by 2020.
**** hah hah, in 2021 should anybody believe Ford again ?????
-----------------------------
That is awesome stuff.
 

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Everyone else made a electric golf cart sold as a car. Tesla is making the electric golf cart into a race car.
 

firsttruck

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A lot of folks think Elon Musk invented the electric car. Others, a little bit older, remember seeing odd wedge-shaped cars in the 70's that instantly identified them as electric cars. I remember my Dad, the Walking Encyclopedia, telling me how when he was a kid in the late 1920's he would see an army of battery electric delivery trucks running around New Jersey. They were quieter, didn't smell like exhaust, and worked great, but fell out of favor when super-cheap oil was discovered in Texas and elsewhere. So at the beginning of the 20th century, it wasn't uncommon to come across a ton of BEVs running the streets. The truth is, the first small-scale electric car was made in 1828. WTF? They've been around almost 200 years? How did I miss that all this time? Now you know.
In fact, the first hybrid electric vehicle was made by Porsche... in 1901.

Another thread you might want to review


The lost history of the electric car – and what it tells us about the future of transport
Thread starter TruckElectric
Start date Aug 3, 2021
https://www.cybertruckownersclub.co...-tells-us-about-the-future-of-transport.3584/
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