General Electric Automobile Company

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
General Electric Automobile Company stock dated April 19, 1899
General Electric from 1899

The General Electric Automobile Company was the 19th century to the end of a short-lived American manufacturer of passenger cars and commercial vehicles with electric drive . There is no connection to the General Electric group .

description

The company was in on June 3, 1898 Philadelphia ( Pennsylvania founded) and maintained production facilities in Manyunck (Pennsylvania). Through the driving force behind the project, John A. Brill , there is a connection to the JG Brill Company in Philadelphia, a leading provider of streetcars and later trolleybuses .

It seems that the vehicle emerged in some kind of competition with the Orient Electric of the Waltham Manufacturing Company in Waltham, Massachusetts . The first President of General Electric, Charles Albert Coffin (1844–1926), was involved in Waltham Manufacturing and ensured that an electric prototype was developed there in the second half of 1898 . Neither managing director Charles Herman Metz (1863-1937) nor the commissioned technicians George M. Tinker and John W. Piper were convinced of this; Metz began experimenting with internal combustion engines at this time and built what was probably the first gasoline-powered motorcycle in the United States. Tinker and Piper were already working on a light steam car that went on sale as Waltham Steam from 1900 independently of Waltham Manufacturing . It is possible that this internal resistance at Waltham Manufacturing ultimately led to the establishment of the General Electric Automobile Company and the transfer of the exploitation of a patent to a battery that weighed approx. 700 lb (approx. 320 kg) compared to the conventional 1000 lb ( approx. 450 kg) was considered particularly light.

The General Electric was available in four versions:

The favorable weight resulted in a competitive range of around 30 miles (50 km) for this early period . As is typical of the time, sales took place through sales outlets that could acquire an agency. In Philadelphia and New York City, the vehicles were sold very successfully through the Wanamaker's Department Stores by John Wanamaker (1838–1922).

At the beginning of 1900 the company ran into difficulties. After the debt exceeded US $ 50,000 and shareholders were unwilling or unable to provide additional capital, the General Electric Automobile Company was closed. The battery patent was sold in July 1900, went for US $ 29,000 to James W. Cunningham from New York, who was possibly in conjunction with the James Cunningham, Son & Company in Rochester (New York) , in turn manufacturer of carriages and funeral vehicles ; this company successfully experimented with electric vehicles around 1900 and sold them until at least 1908. Cunningham is a pioneer of the V8 engine and built a respected quality automobile until 1937.

literature

  • Beverly Rae Kimes, Henry Austin Clark Jr .: Standard catalog of American Cars. 1805-1942. Digital edition . 3. Edition. Krause Publications, Iola 2013, ISBN 978-1-4402-3778-2 , pp. 635 (English).
  • George Nicholas Georgano (Ed.): The Beaulieu Encyclopedia of the Automobile . Volume 2: G-O . Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, Chicago 2001, ISBN 1-57958-293-1 , pp. 615-616 (English).

Web links

Commons : General Electric Automobile Company  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kimes (1996), pp. 403ff.