Posted on 03/11/2012 10:59:59 PM PDT by Impala64ssa
Meet the Roberts electric car. Built in 1896, it gets a solid 40 miles to the charge — exactly the mileage Chevrolet advertises for the Volt, the highly touted $31,645 electric car General Motors CEO Dan Akerson called “not a step forward, but a leap forward.”
The executives at Chevrolet can rest easy for now. Since the Roberts was constructed in an age before Henry Ford’s mass production, the 115-year-old electric car is one of a kind.
But don’t let the car’s advanced age let you think it isn’t tough: Its present-day owner, who prefers not to be named, told The Daily Caller it still runs like a charm, and has even completed the roughly 60-mile London to Brighton Vintage Car Race.
If you didn’t know there are electric cars as old as the Roberts, you aren’t alone. Prior to today’s electric v. gas skirmishes, there was another battle: electric v. gas v. steam. This contest was fought in the market place, and history shows gas gave electric and steam an even more thorough whooping than Coca-Cola gave Moxie.
But while the Roberts electric car clearly lacked GPS, power steering and, yes, air bags, the distance it could achieve on a charge, when compared with its modern equivalent, provides a telling example of the slow pace of the electric car.
Driven by a tiller instead of a wheel, the Roberts car was built seven years before the Wright brothers’ first flight, 12 years before the Ford Model T, 16 years before Chevrolet was founded and 114 years before the first Chevy Volt was delivered to a customer.
As the New York Times reported September 5, “For General Motors and the Obama administration, the new Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid represents the automotive future, the culmination of decades of high-tech research financed partly with federal dollars.”
Like “green technology’s” most powerful proponent, President Barack Obama, the 1896 Roberts was made in Chicago. Obama, who supports the $7,500 tax credit for the Volt, is not fazed by its 40-mile electric limit — he only drove the car 10 feet.
This is sure to arouse liberal whackjobs!
This tells us our technical genius' are $3 bills.
What happened to that gm electric car from the eighties?
I have been saying this all along!
There have been improvements.
Wet cells cause corrosion, they weigh a ton and new battery’s can deliver amperage much faster than before, but electric cars are basically where the were over 100 years ago
Obama said he’s going to get a Chevy Volt in five years, when he’s no longer president, and he’s allowed to drive his own car again.
If all goes well, he will be able to drive a Chevy Volt a lot sooner than that!
On a more serious note, has electric car battery and power technology not advanced in the past 115 years? The Volt has the same range as the old electric cars of the Gay ‘90s?
It’s hard to believe that technology hasn’t advanced, and that the liberals are all in on this old technology as the solution to global warming and God knows what else.
I swear I saw a car from 1897 called the Maxwell that was electric
That performed on par with modern technology.
It didnt go as fast but it went just as far on a charge
I can find nothing of the Maxwell on the web maybe it was a different name.
There were hundreds of electric car company’s back then.
They all went bust because the internal combustion engine is more efficient
I'll be honest with you, electrics can scream now and there's no gearbox they just shit and git.
They will light up the tires, but they have no range and you cant "Fill them up" in 5 mins
They aint practical.
Some of our FR true believes would call you a blasphemer for saying that ;-)
Another reason electric cars are fun today is rare earth magnets.
They can deliver some serious torque.
They just have no range and they take forever to “fill up”
GM EV1 - dicussed in documentary “Who killed the electric car?”
GM crushed all of them in Arizona. Weird rule in early 2000’s forced all owners to sell back. Strange that media never discusses this, right?
IT is what it is.
I argue with engineers all the time who don’t get it
I think Rudolph Diesel was on the right track
Everybody in America has a garage full of battery powered tools with dead battery’s or a lap top with dead battery’s.
We all know they suck. they are for short term work
I will not buy any Government motors car till the union pays back the money they owe us. When are they going to release the algae version of this over priced golf cart?
Tractors have been around forever.
They do the work.
Now Mercedes has blue technology that takes away all the down side of diesels.
Electric cars have been the future for 115 years now!
I never understood how an engineer could think
“Lets use hydrocarbons to make electricity, send it down the line step down the voltage, convert it to DC, store it in a battery and think they were gaining energy.”
IMO, the biggest draw for the IC engine is the fuel which powers it. One cannot carry a gen set for the electrics,but a few jerry cans of fuel and good to go most anywhere at anytime, just fire it up and go.
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