Like 70s fashion, electric cars have come back around.
At one time in there were almost 300 companies in the business of making electric automobiles in this country. Of course, current day Tesla probably makes more cars in a month than all those manufacturers ever made combined. Such was the automotive industry in the early days; someone would make a prototype car or truck and a new automobile manufacturer was born. The vast majority of these companies never produced any number of cars. There were some successes like The Detroit Electric company, but that’s a story for another day.
Let's take a look at some of the more interesting companies to attempt to produce an electric vehicle; Anheuser-Busch. Yes that Anheuser-Busch the one with the beer that everyone loves to hate. In 1903 they tried their hand a making an electric delivery truck. Two of the 24 foot long by 10 foot wide behemoths were produced. They were not successful for some reason. Granted today your average F-250 is larger, but in a time when wagons were the norm, these trucks must have seemed fantastic. This Anheuser-Busch effort proves two things: First, Tesla is the first company to think that long-haul delivery is a good place for electrification. And, second, the Cybertruck is probably not the most ridiculously designed electric vehicle ever - put a pin in that, we'll come back to it later.
ABOVE: A Tesla Semi. Video from: The Tesla Press Gallery
Of course Anheuser-Busch was not the only familiar name looking to get into the electric car market. An unsurprising name when you look at the landscape of the time is Schwinn. The Schwinn bicycle company had been in business since the early 1890s and in 1896 supposedly built and electric car. This is not surprising considering that in that era there was a class of car that was basically two bicycles or motorcycles welded together called the Cyclecar. Their automobile dreams went nowhere and eventually Schwinn bought out his partner and added the Excelsior motorcycle lineup to the company.
In 1896 the now defunct Montgomery-Ward catalog company had two electric vehicles produced. They were shipped via rail around the country and used as advertising props and were never produced in volume. It's pure speculation, but the battery technology not being very good (an understatement) probably prevented any more serious investment in these automobiles. They did try again later with gasoline powered vehicles, but nothing ever came of the prospect.
ABOVE: The Montgomery-Ward electric car. Photo from: The Standard Catalog of American Cars 1805-1942
Coming back to unique design choices, presented in all its glory is this "Mystery Car Electric". This car is another of the one-off advertising gimmicks that were common at the time. The most interesting thing about this car is that it came out in the 1930s. That was a bit late in the game for an electric car, even one that was made for a novelty purpose. And it looks like a lot of companies have taken design clues from the wedge shaped three-wheeler down the years, from the Reliant Robin to the previously mentioned Cybertruck. The one thing the Mystery Car Electric proves is that everything new is old.
ABOVE: 1. The Edsel: A bad design at the wrong time. 2. The Robin Reliant: A bad design all the time. 3. The Mystery Car: A one-off bad design. 4. The Pontiac Aztek: A last gasp bad design. 5. The Tesla Cybertruck: An eccentric design that will, in time, become much loved? Time will tell.
