
Worked for 52 Years, Still Running: 1912 C-T 4WD Electric Truck - prostoalex
https://bringatrailer.com/2018/01/20/worked-for-52-years-still-running-1912-c-t-4wd-electric-truck/
======
ZeroGravitas
Jay Leno (tv host and car enthusiast) has a few very old electric cars in his
collection. In one video (link at the end) he talks about how he and his wife
drove one of the electric cars down to a fancy hotel.

They expected to be a surprising and exotic sight, but one of the bellhops
asked them if they knew Mrs X, who had been driving to the hotel for 5 or six
decades until 2001 in her similar electric car.

[https://youtu.be/OhnjMdzGusc?t=5m35s](https://youtu.be/OhnjMdzGusc?t=5m35s)

~~~
mywittyname
I hope Jay is able to acquire one of these. He and his crew do a wonderful job
preserving our automotive legacy.

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donquichotte
That is one sweet vehicle. I'm working at a college where students are
restoring a Detroit Electric from 1918. The car is in excellent shape,
electrically, mechanically and visually. The lead acid batteries were removed
by the previous owner.

The students are now fitting in Li-Ion batteries. There will be no power
electronics, just a mechanical switch that can put coils of the 4 pole DC
series wound motor either in parallel (high torque) or in series (high speed).
The motor has 4.5HP and the car has a top speed of 35km/h.

~~~
justin66
Why would putting the batteries in parallel offer more torque?

~~~
tonyarkles
[http://www.me.umn.edu/courses/me2011/arduino/technotes/dcmot...](http://www.me.umn.edu/courses/me2011/arduino/technotes/dcmotors/motor-
tutorial/)

My guess is that this is putting the coils in parallel, not the batteries.

According to that link, the applied voltage determines the speed and the
applied current determines the torque. I don't know the exact configuration of
the windings in these motors, but having the coils in series should be putting
a higher voltage on the motor (higher resistance), and having the coils in
parallel should have more current (lower resistance).

Pretty neat way to get a "2 speed" transmission. Of course, it's not going to
be as good as the current generation of BLDC motors (variable speed is tricky
with bang-bang control...), but for the time it's a pretty clever solution.

~~~
cr0sh
> Pretty neat way to get a "2 speed" transmission.

It's almost identical to how the two speed "transmission" works on 12 volt
Power Wheels toy ride-on vehicles.

In those, there are two motors connected to the rear wheels; one for each
wheel. Using a couple of switches on the "shifter", the motors can be
connected to the battery in series (high speed) or parallel (low speed).

Also interesting is that by using two separate motors in that manner, you gain
a form of "electromechanical" differential (not that it matters much, as the
plastic wheels have insane amount of slippage on most surfaces).

~~~
andars
The Power Wheels don't put the motors in parallel or series, it switches the
two 6V _batteries_ between parallel or series. The motors are always in
parallel.

See the patent:
[https://patents.google.com/patent/US4639646A/en?assignee=%22...](https://patents.google.com/patent/US4639646A/en?assignee=%22Power+wheels%22&oq=%22Power+wheels%22++)

------
r41nbowdash
At the beginning of the 20th century something around 40% American cars was
electric, same with 20% of the Berlin taxis.

There's a wonderful book "The Shock of the Old" about the meandering ways
innovation takes.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shock_of_the_Old](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shock_of_the_Old)

~~~
cornholio
So much for the "big oil killed the electric car" conspiracies. The electric
cars were always a contender, and the companies producing them would have
loved to kill petrol cars. They were simply unable to compete with the high
energy density of dead dinosaurs gushing out of the ground to be burned
carefreely.

~~~
_red
My good friend is a material scientist for Exxon. He is employed to find "the
next oil". As he says, its all about "joules of energy per $1 landed cost"
everything else is just noise.

Currently, $1 (retail price) of gasoline delivers more joules of energy than
any of the competition. The rise of fracking has made nat gas a contender, but
gasoline is still dominates.

Most comparisons to electric vehicles are actually a comparison of a car that
runs on gas vs a car that runs on coal, guess which one wins?

~~~
perl4ever
The vast majority (70%) of electricity in the US does not come from coal, and
coal is even less used in states where electric cars are popular/encouraged.
Over 99% of electricity generated in my state (NY) does not come from coal.

Sources:
[https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/index.cfm?page=electrici...](https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/index.cfm?page=electricity_in_the_united_states)

[https://www.eia.gov/state/?sid=NY#tabs-4](https://www.eia.gov/state/?sid=NY#tabs-4)

~~~
djsumdog
Not to mention that when you use gas in a car, a lot of it is wasted. When you
use the grid to power electric means of transportation, like trains, that
energy is evenly distributed as needed, and plants will increase or reduce
production in accordance to estimated demand.

~~~
tzs
Another important consideration is pollution. If you burn a polluting fuel
directly in the car, the pollution is released where the car is, which is
generally where a lot of people are.

You can reduce the emissions by adding technology to process the combustion
products to clean them up before emitting them, but you are limited by the
fact that your cleanup technology has to be small enough and light weight
enough to include with the car.

If you burn that same fuel remotely to make electricity, and use that
electricity to power the car, now the pollution is being emitted at a fixed
location.

We can pick that location to minimize the harm from the pollution that is
emitted, and we can use far more effective cleanup technology at a fixed plant
than we can on a vehicle.

~~~
macintux
This has always struck me as the most compelling argument for electric
vehicles, and I've always been disappointed by people who can't see it.

~~~
tomcam
Perhaps because the pollution emitted by gas-powered vehicles is now
essentially nil

~~~
macintux
At the expense of many layers of defensive mechanisms which a non-trivial
number of people illegally modify, and I'm curious how close to "nil" it
really is.

~~~
milesvp
My understanding is that, at least in the context of local polution emissions
(mostly smog related?) is that the difference between emissions between
electric and gas cars is dwarfed by the pollution effects of rubber and
concrete particulate matter created by driving.

I'm not entirely sure how accurate my knowledge is though, it's based on a few
sort of tangential comments that connected some other data points I know, and
not from any one source I can cite.

Also, the impression I got was this ignores things like leaking oil, which
isn't measured by my state's emissions test. So I'm not trying to make claims
about overall pollution effects between gas and electric.

------
culerawo
Interesting also by the early 1900s a company called "Electric Vehicle
company" was running up to 1,000 electric taxicabs on the streets of New York
City.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxicabs_of_New_York_City#Late...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxicabs_of_New_York_City#Late_1890s)

Also in early 1900s, a Baker Electric was part of the first White House fleet
of cars. President William Howard Taft changed things up at the White House,
converting the stables there to a garage and purchasing a four-car fleet on a
$12,000 budget (equivalent to $326,844 in 2017).

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidential_state_car_(United...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidential_state_car_\(United_States\)#History)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baker_Motor_Vehicle#Special_Ba...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baker_Motor_Vehicle#Special_Baker_Electrics)

------
Tepix
Personally I'm wondering whether or not the steam engine will ever make a
comeback. There have been some attempts (e.g. a company called Enginion with
their SteamCell) that didn't get sufficient funding despite promising results.

Modern steam engines do not require lubricants, are low emission and can use
renewable energy sources.

~~~
jacquesm
If you include 'steam turbines' into the steam engine category then steam has
never left. And even if you don't there are some interesting tricks that steam
can do that only electrical comes close (such as all the torque at 0 RPM)
which makes steam uniquely suitable for some purposes (very heavy offshore
cranes for instance, deck catapults on flight decks for another).

~~~
nradov
Steam catapults on flight decks have been replaced with linear electric motors
for new ships.

[http://www.ga.com/emals](http://www.ga.com/emals)

~~~
jacquesm
That's very cool. Thank you for that bit of info, I did not know about it, but
it makes good sense, the torque curves are similar and electric is probably
less of a hassle to maintain.

~~~
0xfeba
They are actually quite costly and unreliable, or at least they used to be:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_Aircraft_Launc...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_Aircraft_Launch_System#Reliability)

------
vsizov
Awesome, I like it a lot. One note about motor power: 85V * 10A = 850W (which
is 1.15 HP) so that seller gives a wrong information!

Thanks for the article

~~~
unwind
This part makes it even more confusing:

 _In the battery compartment, nine trays were used to hold a 500 pound, five-
foot-long lead-acid battery pack that produced 10 volts._

I guess it is 10 volts per cell, not for the entire pack? With 9 cells in
series that would give 90 V which sounds close enough.

Still confused. :)

~~~
Dylan16807
The missing word is "each", I believe. 9 packs, 10V per pack, each pack
(consisting of 5 batteries) weighing 500lb.

------
userbinator
Those curious about early electric vehicles may find this old book, free
courtesy of archive.org, very interesting:

[https://archive.org/details/audelsnewelectri008004mbp](https://archive.org/details/audelsnewelectri008004mbp)

Chapter 162(!) at the end is short but entirely about electric trucks and
tractors. The rest of the book is mostly electric locomotives and there is
also a short section near the end on electric elevators.

------
mrkurt
There's Mr Rogers episode about a car with similar tech in 1981, kinda neat:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyKJ-
iQ7MPM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyKJ-iQ7MPM)

------
yonatron
"laden" or "loaded", please, but NOT "laded"!!

------
EADGBE
This is really the most exciting thing about electric-motor vehicles to me.
With such fewer moving parts there's less to break down and go wrong.

Having a vehicle that's more than likely able to last 25+ years without any
real maintenance at all* is extremely enticing. I wonder how this will affect
future electric car values. And I wonder if we can curb our consumerism
mentalities to actually let something like this happen.

Unfortunately, with the tech-minded companies producing these vehicles; I'm
afraid of planned obsolescence.

~~~
outworlder
> With such fewer moving parts there's less to break down and go wrong.

People don't really appreciate that enough. It's mostly solid state
electronics. The only major degrading part is the battery. Its currently not
too cheap to replace, but it is highly recyclable. Fix the battery and the car
is basically new. The drivetrain will last for a long while.

~~~
mywittyname
I'm not so sure about this; part of my father's business involves rebuilding
electric motors and I was surprised by the rebuild intervals of some of them.

I'm sure they will be engineered to a certain life expectancy, but I'm
interested to see how long they will end up lasting in modern automotive
applications.

~~~
andars
What kind of electric motors? Brushed DC by chance?

~~~
mywittyname
I don't know much about electric motors, but I think these are typically 230
or 460V AC, three-phase motors in the 10-30hp range.

They operate in extreme conditions though, so that's certainly a factor.

------
larrydag
Is this the same one listed on craigslist?

[https://losangeles.craigslist.org/lac/cto/d/1912-t-electric-...](https://losangeles.craigslist.org/lac/cto/d/1912-t-electric-
truck-5-ton/6451236855.html)

~~~
ghostbrainalpha
Yes, it links to that listing in the first paragraph of the article.

~~~
j_s
The ultimate
[http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html),
getting a cragslist post to the top of HN.

------
anonu
The Craigslist link in the article has way more details and is more
interesting to read than the article itself.

Also, people forget that the first cars were electric. Battery tech just
wasn't there 100+ years ago and the combustion engine won out...

[https://losangeles.craigslist.org/lac/cto/d/1912-t-electric-...](https://losangeles.craigslist.org/lac/cto/d/1912-t-electric-
truck-5-ton/6451236855.html)

~~~
dragonwriter
> Also, people forget that the first cars were electric.

There were early (earlier than internal combustion) electric cars, but
external combustion (steam) cars were even earlier (both prototype and
practical vehicles.)

------
IronWolve
Carried double the recommended capacity for 10 tons for 8 mph fully loaded all
day without recharge with the equivalent of 12 of today's batteries Probably
from train station delivering the paper rolls to the printing presses all day
back and forth.

Sounds impressive, the covered wagon cab when it came out is interesting too.

------
dmitrygr
I think the math is a bit wrong in the article.

    
    
       > 85-volt, 10-amp General Electric motor
       > They each produced 16 HP when new
    

85V 10A -> 850W of power provided to each motor

16HP is just under 12000W, so the motors had an efficiency of 1404% ?

~~~
londons_explore
This could be "peak pull away power" vs "continuous running power".

Motors are normally rated in continuous power, but I bet marketing materials
would mention the peak power, since that's most relevant to the use case of
getting up to speed.

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viperscape
The post says 85volts 10amps, that's 850watts. Which is around 1.2 horse
power. With 4 of these it made at best 5hp. I'm not sure why the post says
each motor made 16hp. Something is not right

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mempko
During that time half the cars on the road were electric. It is truly sad to
see how we have regressed. I wonder what will happen first? Extinction of the
human race because of global warming? Or half the cars being electric? ...

~~~
Kayou
Honestly, if all car today and in the last 70 years had huge lead batteries, I
don't think it would be a good thing. Battery recycling is a fair problem for
today's electric cars and people at the time used to throw away anywhere what
they didn't need any more, including their car batteries.

~~~
patrickg_zill
Not sure what you mean exactly, but lead acid battery recycling is something
like 95% effective in terms of what is recovered, and lead can be easily
recycled multiple times. Lithium being more expensive is also well known for
being able to be recycled.

~~~
Kayou
What I meant was that back in the old days, people didn't bother as much to
recycle things, so lead batteries ended up thrown away in the nature. Of
course today we recycle a lot more, so it would be less of a problem.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
In what geography, any evidence? Those who lived through the wars and
depression(s), and baby-boomers, are notorious for their frugality and reuse.

~~~
Kayou
Where I live (european country) people used to throw away things in a big dump
and then it would be burned or something, but now you have to separate things.
I don't have any evidence of it though. Maybe they were recycling it
themselves for all this time!

