Electric car

“ But if a man buys a horse and gives it in charge of the gardener’s boy, he is likely to have trouble with his horse. In the same way, if a man buys an electric carriage and expects his coachman to look after it, he only naturally does have considerable trouble. There are several companies prepared to look after and maintain in continuous use, not only the batteries, but the complete carriages, and this is greatly improving the reliability of the electric car, and allaying the fears of those anxious to have such carriages. ”

“ The Cantono Electric Fore Carriage is sold individually at the above price, which includes the attaching of same to any horse-drawn vehicle, converting it to an electric carriage. Complete vehicles are also marketed by this concern. ”

“ The current goes to the motor on the car by the middle conductor, and is returned to the generator by the side-rails.
The advantages of the electric railway, should it be made practicable in all respects, are obvious, and there is good reason for believing that in time it will be made available and economical even for lines of considerable length.
In the streets of a city, electric cars would be advantageous upon the surface roads for the reason that they could be run more quietly and swiftly than horse-cars, and, as an electric car can be stopped in less than its own length, just as safely ”

“ But the simple electric car will not be a universal favourite until either accumulators are so light that a very large store of electricity can be carried without inconvenient addition of weight, or until charging stations are erected all over the country at distances of fifty miles or so apart. ”

“ That any such ideas as to what electricity can accomplish are visionary and impracticable may seem to be the case to some; that they are so in reality is not believed by many who have given the subject impartial study. Some of these believe that, in the very near future electric cars will supplant horse-cars; and upon short lines like elevated roads, steam-locomotives ”

“ Everybody laughed to think how the car had run away and left the astonished conductor in the road unable to stop it; but Grandma said, "Runaways or no runaways, the electric car is the marvel of the age. It does not seem as if the mind of man could devise anything more wonderful than this harnessing of electricity; but yet it may be that Harriet will sometime ride in one of the horseless carriages her father spoke of yesterday. ”

“ Just as the perfection of the gasoline motor spurred on the inventors to adapt the steam-engine for use in automobiles, so the inventors of the storage battery, which is the heart of an electric carriage, were stirred up to make electric propulsion practical.
The storage battery of an electric vehicle is practically a tank that holds electricity; the electrical energy of the dynamo is transformed into chemical energy in the batteries, which in turn is changed into electrical energy again and used to run the motors.
Electric automobiles are the most simple of all the self-propelled vehicles. ”

“ In 1896, New England saw its first motor race of electric cars. The names of make or makers of electric cars familiar from that date on include those of Riker, Pope, Waverley,116 Baker, Woods, Barrows, Studebaker, whose first cars were electric, Columbus Buggy, Rauch & Lang, Detroit, Ohio and Anderson.
But the electric car industry never has reached the proportions of the gasoline car industry. It has never advertised in the lavish manner adopted by gasoline car makers. It has not entered races to the extent its gasoline competitors have. ”

“ A further rival to the electric tramway is arising in the system of railless electric traction, the fundamental principle of which is the application of electric power, derived from overhead wires, to electric cars, resembling motor-omnibuses (or alternatively, to goods lorries and vans) , driven on ordinary roads without rails, and capable of being steered in and out of the traffic over the whole width of the roadway. ”

“ The limitations under which the early steam car laboured have, in the main, disappeared, for the modern steamer can travel nearly as far without requiring to refill the boiler as a petrol car can travel without replenishment of the fuel tank. The electric car is still the luxury to be employed in towns and in covering short distances, for the weight of the accumulators has not been greatly reduced, despite sensational announcements made from time to time.
An interesting feature of the motor movement has been the steady growth in popularity of the motor cycle. ”

“ On electric cars the motor is generally suspended from the wheel truck, and a small pinion on the armature shaft gears with a large pinion on a wheel axle. One great advantage of electric traction is that every vehicle of a train can carry its own motor, so that the whole weight of the train may be used to get a grip on the rails when starting. Where a single steam locomotive is used, the adhesion of its driving-wheels only is available for overcoming the inertia of the load ”

“ Electric town-cars are generally of the landaulette type—for theatre-going, and for paying visits in such inaccessible suburbs as Stoke Newington, Balham, and Hampstead. They carry from two to four passengers, can attain a speed of fourteen miles an hour, and will run forty miles without recharging.
A long-distance electric car, to compete with petrol, has yet to be made, but it will shortly be possible to obtain one of moderate weight at a reasonable price that will cover one hundred and twenty miles on a single charge ”

“ When they were changed to electric cars, electricity became the successful rival of nothing else than a twisted wire cable. The cars still run by steam power as before, but that power is transmitted by electricity instead of the discarded cable. Steam has driven out the horse as a power for drawing street cars, and electricity has enabled us to gather all the steam engines into central stations, where now they are furnishing the power for moving surface, elevated, and subway cars for street traffic, as also trains for suburban travel. ”

“ Thomas Davenport, a blacksmith of Brandon, Vermont, built an electric car in 1835, which he was able to drive on the road, and so made himself the pioneer of the automobile in America. Twelve years later Moses G. Farmer exhibited at various places in New England an electric-driven locomotive, and in 1851 Charles Grafton Page drove an electric car, on the tracks of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, from Washington to Bladensburg, at the rate of nineteen miles an hour. But the cost of batteries was too great and the use of the electric motor in transportation not yet practicable. ”

“ As the batteries also, when arranged in parallel groups, are able to yield a heavier current, the arrangement is mutually satisfactory to both batteries and motors. For reversing, the controller is brought into such a position as to send the current the reverse way through the motor.
An electric car does not require change-speed gear because it contains practically a gear in itself. It accommodates itself to the load and does its best at any given load, or by varying the electric pressure it may be caused to increase or diminish its power within limits. ”

“ When the car is finished and provided with properly designed and geared electromotors, and furnished with an adequate battery and properly constructed controller and connections, it very rarely happens that anything gets out of order, and practically mishaps can only occur when a heavy electric vehicle is being forced up a steep, hill either through heavy mud or at irrational speed. There is no doubt whatever that the trustworthiness of an electromobile is one of its most attractive characteristics, and that it comes nearer to being a 'fool proof' vehicle than any other type of automobile. ”

“ The people could not be carried from one part of a city to another without great discomfort. The street cars drawn by horses could not carry the crowds and the elevated steam cars were not satisfactory. Wits were set to work to relieve the situation and about thirty years ago the electric car (Fig. 5) was invented. Without horse or locomotive this quick-moving car not only successfully handles the crowds which move about the city but it also relieves over-crowding by enabling thousands to reach conveniently and cheaply their suburban homes. ”

“ I believe, however, that the mechanical system is bound to work material changes in car construction, in fact it is almost imperative. In all probability a car with 15 to 20 per cent. greater seating capacity than the horse car can be constructed on a different plan for the price given for the electric car. This price, it must be noted, is the one for attachment of motor to the present horse car. The horse cars produced to-day are most carefully planned, thoroughly built, and admirably adapted to their service, but the inexorable law of progress decrees their extinction, for something better. ”

“ The increased speed of the electric cars and the comfort rendered possible by larger vehicles always increase the receipts when horse traction is replaced by electric, while the latter, as compared with the cable, allows better and easier control of the car and a much greater possible speed variation. ”

“ The general conclusion to which these experiments bring us is that, undoubtedly, if it could certainly be relied upon, the electric car would be the preferable form of tramway motor in towns, because it is simply a self-contained ordinary tram-car, and in a town the service requires a number of separate cars, occupying as small a space each as is compatible with accommodating the passengers, and which follow each other at rapid intervals. ”

“ In stopping the car, this energy has to be absorbed or dissipated in some way or other. One method is to utilise the friction of brake blocks on the wheels, or of skids on the rails themselves. With the electric car, however, it is possible to absorb the energy by making it drive the motors as if they were dynamos. The moving car drives the wheels, which in turn drive the motors; and the current so generated may either be absorbed in electrical [Pg 68] 'resistances' or led to electro-magnets which are so placed that they exercise a retarding pull on the rails. ”

“ Every month the electric street car is more and more displacing the horse car, with added comfort to passengers and diminished wear of our thoroughfares. Power is conveyed silently over wires from central stations and distributed wherever it may be required for manufacturing purposes, saving a vast outlay in separate boilers and engines, and greatly economizing space. In great telegraph centers the dynamo is displacing cell batteries for the production of current. ”

“ As a rule, the cars used for electric traction have varied but slightly from the type of tramway car prevalent in different localities. The tendency, however, has been to increase their size.Cars. For electric railway work, as distinguished from tramway work, the cars generally follow the pattern that is standard on American steam lines. The trucks used for electric cars are made of steel, with heavy axles and suspension bars for carrying the electric motors. ”

“ With the automobile the case is very different; the vehicle has no fixed course, but is required to go everywhere, and the current must be supplied from a source carried by it. If primary batteries could be made so as to furnish electric currents at a low cost, then the electric carriage would be in the same position as those operated by steam or gasoline, and it could go wherever the proper chemicals to renew the battery could be obtained. ”

“ In the electric car, it is possible that those driven by petrol may, at some future time, find a serious competitor. The electric broughams used in towns exhibit the high state-of efficiency obtained by the employment of this propulsive agent, and the absence of noise and smell. ”

“ As regards the rapidity with which the motors could be brought into use from standing empty in the shed, the electric car could receive its accumulators more rapidly than could the boiler for heating the exhaust of the compressed-air car be brought into use. ”

“ If an electric were to be built for long trips it would be too heavy; an internal-combustion motor car, however, can easily be built for a range two or three times larger than the one now usual. An internal-combustion motor car can be supplied with new energy in a few minutes, whereas it takes several hours to charge the storage battery of an electric automobile. A person making short trips about the city may well get along with an electric automobile with one battery. ”

“ It is now applied to about 85,000 cars in 22 countries; 32,000 of these cars being in Germany, 17,000 in Great Britain, and 15,000 in the United States. The electric light is as yet used only on a few of the finest express trains, the current being generated either from a steam engine and dynamo in the baggage car, or from a dynamo on each car, driven from one of the car axles. Storage batteries maintain the light when the cars are at rest. American cars were heated by stoves at a very early date, and this developed into the hot water system, with a stove and circulating pipes in each car. ”

“ Steam and gasoline vehicles can be used to travel long distances from the cities, for water can be had and gasoline bought almost anywhere; but electric automobiles, driven by the third of the three powers used for self-propelled vehicles, must keep within easy reach of the charging stations. ”