Barrett & Perret Electric

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The Barrett & Perret Electric was an electric car that engineers JA Barrett and A. Frank Perret built in New York City ( New York ) in 1896 .

In 1895 they received an order from a banker from Texas to optimize the performance of his Baker & Elberg Electric brand from Kansas City (Missouri) . This is probably the first documented vehicle tuning in automotive history.

Barrett & Perret Electric

Barrett and Perret brought the experience gained from this conversion to their own vehicle the following year. It was created according to their plans in the workshop of J. Curley . The relatively small vehicle was given a body as dos-à-dos ; that is, the rear passengers sat backwards to the direction of travel and on a compartment in which the bulky batteries were housed. The structure with wooden spoked wheels and steering levers, which appears remarkably light for an electric vehicle of this era, is attributed to the long-established Brewster & Company (1856–1937), which at the time was domiciled on East 25th Street in New York a difficult phase; At the end of 1895 it went bankrupt and the company was under an insolvency administration . Perret was not satisfied with the result and no production followed. A photo of the vehicle has been preserved.

Perret Electric

The partnership also ended and he then experimented with a new, significantly lighter lead - sulfuric acid battery. To produce them, he organized the Perret Electric Storage Battery Company at 21 State Street in New York in 1900, and in the same year built a prototype that was mainly used to test his batteries. The vehicle was even lighter than its predecessor from 1896. It was designed as a two-seater runabout and had wire-spoke wheels. The body was clearly lifted from the chassis. The batteries were located in the middle under the bench. A photo of this electric car has also been preserved. The company was focused on the manufacture of batteries; however, they were happy to deliver a replica of the test vehicle upon request.

literature

  • Beverly Rae Kimes (Ed.), Henry Austin Clark Jr.: Standard Catalog of American Cars 1805-1942. 3. Edition. Krause Publications, Iola WI 1996, ISBN 0-87341-428-4 .
  • GN Georgano (Ed.): Complete Encyclopedia of Motorcars, 1885 to the Present. 2nd Edition. Dutton Press, New York 1973, ISBN 0-525-08351-0 .
  • David A. Kirsch: The Electric Vehicle and the Burden of History. Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick NJ / London 2000, ISBN 0-8135-2809-7 .
  • Ernest Henry Wakefield: History of the Electric Automobile. Battery-Only Powered Cars. Edited by SAE ( Society of Automotive Engineers ), Warrendale PA 1970, ISBN 1-56091-299-5 .
  • Gijs Mom: The Electric Vehicle: Technology and Expectations in the Automobile Age. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004. (Reprint: 2012, ISBN 978-1-4214-0970-2 )