Electric vehicles AG

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New factory Tribelhorn, Elektrofahrzeug AG in Zurich Altstetten from 1918

The Electric Vehicles AG  ( EFAG ) was a  Swiss  manufacturer of electric vehicles , especially light trucks. The company emerged from Tribelhorn Accumulatoren AG .

history

The times of the greatest successes and the first sales difficulties for electric vehicles are close together after the First World War. The production of electrically powered vehicles developed into a niche application of factory vehicles. Under the founder Johann Albert Tribelhorn , the company moved to Altstetten in 1918. The construction of heavy trucks with electric drive was stopped. After the near bankruptcy of Tribelhorn AG, the company name was deleted from the commercial register in 1922. With the help of the Oerlikon battery factory , operations were now continued under the name of Elektrofahrzeuge AG, EFAG . From 1926 his son Leon Ricardo Tribelhorn managed EFAG. Another move of the manufacturing site took place in 1929 on the premises of the accumulator factory Oerlikon. Leon Ricardo Tribelhorn left the company in 1932 and Hans Weiss became his successor.

vehicles

During the construction of the Mühleberg power plant in 1918, EFAG supplied several vehicles for the trackless works railway, an early application of the overhead line or trolley bus system. This pioneering application could not be developed into a separate line of business; the first Swiss bus line was not set up in Lausanne until 1932 . Swiss industrial companies, city and local administrations, the SBB and the post office (PTT) were subsequently the main customers for the special vehicles. With the almost 50 vehicles ordered by PTT for mail distribution, EFAG reached its largest series production in 1919.

EFAG today

Several vehicles and the entire corporate estate of this brand are preserved in the national transport collection in the Swiss Museum of Transport in Lucerne .

literature

  • Martin Sigrist: Johann Albert Tribelhorn and his legacy at EFAG and NEFAG - pioneering history of the electric automobile. Association for economic history studies, Zurich 2011, ISBN 978-3-909059-54-6 ( Swiss pioneers in business and technology. Vol. 93).
  • Christoph Maria Merki: The bumpy triumph of the automobile 1895–1930. For the motorization of road traffic in France, Germany and Switzerland. Vienna 2002.
  • Gijs Mom: The Electric Vehicle. London 2004.
  • GN Georgano (Ed.), G. Marshall Naul: Complete Encyclopedia of Commercial Vehicles. MBI Motor Books International, Osceola WI, 1979; ISBN 0-87341-024-6 .

Web links

Commons : Tribelhorn  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. a b Georgiano, Naul: Complete Encyclopedia of Commercial Vehicles (1979), p. 215 (EFAG)