The Indestructible Electric

The only electric car now on the market is the Henney Kilowatt, which uses the Renault Dauphine body. The units come direct from the factory, less radiators, engines, and drive trains.

The luggage compartment under the front bonnet contains six sixvolt batteries, one twelve-volt battery (for lights, windshield wipers, and so on), and two chargers. Under the rear bonnet, where the engine ordinarily is, are six more batteries, the controlling switchgear, and a sixhorsepower traction motor. From the driver’s seat, everything looks normal except that there is no clutch pedal, and three instruments have been added — a forward-reverse switch, a voltmeter, and an ammeter. The voltmeter serves as a fuel gauge, indicating how much power is left in the batteries; the ammeter indicates the rate at which the power is being used up, serving the same purpose as the vacuum gauges some drivers install to help them operate gasolineengined cars economically. There’s a key in what looks like an ignition lock, and the accelerator, now called the ‟power pedal,” is in the usual place beside the brake pedal.

When one turns the key, there’s a double clicking sound from the switchgear in the rear compartment. The forward-reverse selector makes the same sound as a light switch. Up to this point, no current has been used. The power pedal is now depressed, gently, until one click is heard, and the car moves off at five or six miles an hour with no sound except a subdued whine from the motor in the rear. Depression of the go pedal through five more clicks — the sound of switches cutting in more voltage — brings the car up to 40 miles an hour. The power pedal must be treated gently. A driver who simply puts his foot down will find his head jerking backward as the car jumps ahead; unlike the internal combustion gasoline engine, which produces no power until it is spinning fast, the electric motor develops great torque, or twisting effort, when it is barely turning, (so does the steam, engine.)

Once the car is under way on level ground, the pedal can be backed off to the first or second position, and the speed will hold at 30 to 35 miles an hour. Of course, the pedal can be held down hard for greater speed, but at the cost of early battery exhaustion. The car in which Camille Jenatzy made a world’s record in 1899 was practically filled with batteries, and he exhausted them in little more than a kilometer.

Driving on country or suburban roads in an electric, one hears a new sound — the pinging of an occasional pebble picked up by the tires and thrown against the fenders. A gasoline-engined car makes so much noise that one hears only stones of some size. Going downhill, with your foot off the power pedal, you hear no trace of mechanical sound, only wind and tire noises. The realization that all downhill going is free, on the house, makes it the more pleasurable.

When an electric car stops at a light or in a traffic jam, everything stops. A gasoline engine still runs, sitting there using up gas and oil, pumping out noxious vapors, and bringing itself to a boil while doing no useful work. In the electric, nothing turns; the car simply waits. Because an electric motor does not produce power by burning anything, it runs cool and doesn’t use as much as a teacup of oil in a year. Aside from a periodic check on the water in the batteries, there is almost no maintenance procedure. If the Henney Kilowatt has been run 60 miles an hour in its low-speed range, or 40 at a high rate, the batteries will be low. A lift of the front compartment lid will disclose a long plug-in wire running to the chargers. Stabbed into the nearest outlet, the chargers will bring the batteries up to full power in seven or eight hours, at a cost which can vary from 25 to 50 cents, depending upon locality. It will not be necessary to recharge the batteries every night. The average car runs only sixteen miles a day. Indeed, more than half of the cars in this country do less than five miles a day!

Before World War I, utility companies considered that each electric car would use $100 worth of current yearly. Since then, the price of electricity has gone down two thirds. The price of gasoline has tripled.