Electric Vehicle Company

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Electric Vehicle Company
legal form Corporation, holding
founding 1897
resolution 1907
Reason for dissolution fusion
Seat New York City and Hartford (Connecticut)
management
  • Henry G. Morris
  • Pedro G. Salom
Branch Electric car and taxi manufacturers

The Electric Vehicle Company (EVC) was a manufacturer of electrically powered taxis and the largest automobile manufacturer in the United States at the end of the 19th century . The company was reorganized as a holding company in 1897 and then served as a vehicle for the (unsuccessful) establishment of taxi monopolies in larger cities. In connection with opaque financial transactions and as the legal entity for the Selden patent , the company came under increasing criticism. Between 1901 and 1909, the EVC was the legal successor to the Columbia Automobile Company and thus manufacturer of Columbia and Columbia Electric vehicles. After that the name was given up. Said vehicles were manufactured by the successor Columbia Motor Car Company until 1913 . ( See Columbia Automobile Company for all data on Columbia and Columbia Electric vehicles ).

Company history

Isaac L. Rice

Isaac Rice

The German-born inventor and entrepreneur Isaac L. Rice (1850-1915) founded the Electric Storage Battery Company (ESB ) in 1888, based at the intersection of 19th Street and Allegheny Avenue in Philadelphia, and made it the market leader for stationary batteries.

Electric Vehicle Company

The founding of the Electric Vehicle Company (EVC) on September 27, 1897, around the same time as the Electric Boat Company, was his next logical step, because the electrically powered vehicles produced here were typical users of such accumulators. The Electric Vehicle Company specialized in reliable motorized cabs with electric drives . Electric Vehicle branded road vehicles existed from 1897 to 1899.

Electric Carriage & Wagon Company

As early as May 1897, the Electric Carriage & Wagon Company (ECWC) in New York was taken over. Its designers Henry G. Morris and Pedro G. Salom built the first really usable electric car in 1893 with the Morris & Salom Electrobat I. Morris and Salom had not been exclusively employed by ECVC and continued to build electric vehicles at their other operation, the Morris & Salom Electric Company . The designer Hiram Percy Maxim (1869-1936) became chief engineer of the Columbia Automobile Company .

The range of such vehicles was initially a little more than 30 kilometers, which restricted their practical use in urban areas and made a dense network of stations necessary. The pioneering work to had formed as recently as January 1896 ECVC done, which had developed a rental system, their vehicles but also sold. Morris and Salom were convinced that the necessary technical understanding for the operation and maintenance of the vehicles could not be assumed from private customers.

Hansom Cabs

EVC Hansom Cab Kraftdroschke , around 1904

The first generation of EVC's electric taxis was bodied as Hansom Cabs . This design, originally developed for (rental) horse-drawn carriages, was occasionally used in the early days of the automobile on motor vehicles and, in particular, powerhouses . With the Hansom , the passengers sit in a closed compartment, the coachman or driver has his seat at the back, unprotected from the weather, high above the roof of the vehicle. Access to the passenger compartment is from the side or from the front via a double wing door, depending on the design.

At EVC , taxi owners and private customers could no longer buy the vehicles, they could only rent them. The idea was taken over from the concept of rental stables and relay stations, which are also well known to customers, which rent horses and teams in this way. In the individually negotiated contracts, maintenance and charging costs were also regulated and driver training was simplified. EVC set up a network of service stations in several cities, where this work was carried out and, above all, the battery packs were replaced.

William Collins Whitney

William C. Whitney

Several hundred EVC vehicles were manufactured between 1897 and 1899 ; Several dozen were in operation in Manhattan alone .

In February 1899, New York City was hit by a violent blizzard. As William Collins Whitney , former Secretary of the Navy (1885-1889) and a Wall Street -Magnat, observed that the Hansom Cabs of EVC were the only motor vehicles, which coped with the bad road conditions during snow storm, this was the trigger, the Electric Vehicle Company with the help of a syndicate that also included Thomas Fortune Ryan (1851-1928), Anthony Nicholas Brady (1841-1913) and possibly Peter Arrell Brown Widener (1834-1915).

Lead Cab Trust

Traffic on Broadway (Manhattan) (1898)
Automobile parade in Manhattan, November 4, 1899. EVC -Hansom can be seen (with high probability) at 1:12 min., 1:20 min. And 1:26 min. At least 10 different models with gasoline, steam and electric drive pass the camera for this Edison film.

The investors who found themselves here were monopolists who had previously invested in local public transport with the aim of controlling it by displacing or buying local tram companies.

The same maneuvers were also attempted with EVC in several cities: New York City, Philadelphia, Chicago , Washington, DC, and Boston . This earned the company and its owners the nickname Lead Cab Trust because of the lead content in the batteries of taxis ("Lead" = lead; "Cab" = taxi). The term was coined by the specialist magazine Horseless Age Magazine .

The mood on the EVC board was characterized by mistrust and the company was repeatedly confronted with allegations of corruption .

Reorganizations

Against this background, negotiations with the bicycle and automobile industrialist Albert Augustus Pope (1843–1909) took place in April 1899 . At the time, Pope was one of the few entrepreneurs with experience in the mass production of road vehicles and, with his American Bicycle Company (ABC), was already the market leader in the bicycle sector. Several automobile factories were also connected.

As a result, there was the largest merger in US industry to date. Whitney's consortium contributed US $ 1 million in capital. Pope incorporated his Columbia Automobile Company in Hartford, Connecticut, along with all automotive-related patents, together a value of another million US $. For the EVC itself, including facilities, equipment and patents, another million US $ was estimated. The Electric Vehicle Company was reorganized as a holding company , to which the Columbia Automobile Company in Hartford (Connecticut) was affiliated as a subsidiary . Other manufacturers to be acquired in the future, as well as the taxi operating companies in the respective cities, should be incorporated as additional subsidiaries if necessary. The reorganization took place on April 19, 1899. Pope remained president of the Columbia Automobile Company , its vice-president with George H. Day (1851-1907), a close confidante of Popes, who already played an important role in building the bicycle company and since 1895 also dealt with automobiles. Harold Hayden Eames , plant manager at Pope and one of the developers of the Pope bicycle frame, became CFO and secretary. Whitney served on the board.

The aforementioned purchase of the Electric Carriage & Wagon Company (ECWC) on May 9, 1899 made a new reorganization necessary. This company was capitalized at US $ 5 million. The production department of EVC, the Electric Storage Battery Company with a valuable patent on batteries, and the brought in Pope car factories were attached to him. George Day became President of the Society and Harold Hayden Eames became Vice President . As the operator of the electric taxis, EVC bought the entire corresponding production of the ECWC. The concept of the financial interdependence of taxi operators and manufacturers persisted for a very long time.

The previous EVC production facility in New York was no longer required. The successors of the EVC now came from the Pope plant in Hartford (Connecticut) and were marketed as Columbia , which made Columbia the market leader in the US auto industry, with a market share of almost 50 percent. Henry Ford only achieved such dominance a decade and a half later with his Model T , albeit with a completely different product in a different market segment. Unlike the Model T , Columbia and EVC automobiles were expensive and unprofitable luxury products. Market leadership was lost to Oldsmobile in 1901 .

As early as June 1900, Whitney and his investors had paid out Pope; he urgently needed funds to support his own troubled corporation.

EVC and the Selden Patent

The Selden Road engine on a drawing for patent 549.160 (1895).
George B. Selden at the demonstration of a replica of his Selden Road Engine from 1877. Photo from 1906.

The real goal of controlling the taxi market was not even achieved by the lead cab trust , which was strengthened in this way.

It was more by chance that Whitney and his partners became aware of the Selden patent . This had already been issued at the end of 1895 after it had been delayed for almost 20 years by the owner, patent attorney and inventor George Baldwin Selden of Rochester, New York (1846–1922). It concerns a Selden Road Engine or a motor vehicle called Road Wagon , which he built after 1877. He saw his claim as universally applicable to all vehicles with internal combustion engines and derived from this that all corresponding vehicles manufactured or imported in the USA during the patent period are subject to license. The implementation of this claim required large financial resources and Selden endeavored with moderate success to the evaluation.

The engineer Herman F. Cuntz , who worked under Maxim, heard of this patent and warned his boss of possible problems that could arise with the Columbia gasoline car under preparation . In fact, the question of the patent law situation only arose during the negotiations between the Whitney Consortium and Pope. EVC has now changed its strategy: At the suggestion of George H. Day , Whitney and Pope Selden bought the rights to the patent for US $ 10,000 plus an annual fee of US $ 5,000. The negotiations with Selden were carried out by Harold Eames and Cuntz on behalf of the recently purchased Electric Carriage & Wagon Company . The preliminary investigations were intensive and time-consuming; Selden extended her purchase option twice.

To exploit the patent, an organization was founded on March 1, 1903, the Association of Licensed Automobile Manufacturers (ALAM). Selden received an advisory mandate. George Day left EVC and became managing director of ALAM. He was also responsible for organizing the New York Motor Show in Madison Square Garden .

In 1902 a legal dispute began for years with a group of "independent" vehicle manufacturers around Henry Ford. It was not until 1911 that the universal claim was partially denied in the second instance. The dispute had an enormous negative impact on the early US auto industry and was followed with great interest on both sides thanks to strong media coverage as well as aggressive and modern communication strategies on both sides.

Baker Torpedo Kid

In 1902, the Electric Vehicle Company built an electric racing car for competitor Baker Electric . The vehicle was designed by Walter C. Baker and was similar to an earlier Jeantaud construction. It received an electric motor from Elwell-Parker with 12 HP according to the calculation method at the time and a streamlined body which was reminiscent of a submarine . The vehicle is one of the first examples of the implementation of aerodynamic principles in automotive engineering and, according to unconfirmed statements, the first car with a seat belt .

Success and optimism

At first, business seemed to be fine. Several taxi companies have been set up including the New York Electric Vehicle Transportation Company (with a capital of astronomical US $ 25 million), the New England Electric Vehicle Transportation Company in Boston , the Illinois Electric Vehicle Transportation Company in Chicago, and the Pennsylvania Electric Vehicle Transportation Company with capital of US $ 6 million. Half of these companies were run by Whitney people and the other half by local investors. 16 smaller companies were also planned, each to be capitalized at around US $ 100,000. ECW received an order for 4,200 taxis and the company planned to produce 8,000 electric cabs in 1900.

For this purpose, production facilities were purchased, such as the Hartford Cycle Works , the New Haven Carriage Works and finally also the competitor Riker Electric Motor Company in Elizabethport ( New Jersey ). Its owner, the well-known electrical pioneer Andrew L. Riker , then became Vice President and Technical Director of the Locomobile Company , where he was responsible for the development and production of vehicles with internal combustion engines. Several years are given for this acquisition: 1900 or 1902. George H. Day had since left his position at Pope and in 1899 replaced Isaac Rice as President of the Electric Storage Battery Company , which was connected to the Electric Vehicle Company via ECWC . As early as June 1900, Whitney and his investors paid off Pope; he urgently needed funds to support his own troubled corporation. It can be assumed that Day succeeded Popes as President of the EVC in this context.

Consolidation

But now the difficulties began. The concept of monopolizing the taxi market with electric cabs did not catch on because of the very high production costs and because the vehicles could not establish themselves because of their short range and high maintenance costs. The company maintained the appearance of solidity, not least through stock manipulation. The attacks were particularly fierce on the part of automotive magazines, above all Horseless Age , which wrote at the end of 1899:

"They've gotten grotesque, and when they have any remnant of a sense of honor they'll step back and leave the field to the mechanics and manufacturers who rightfully deserve it."

As a result, the share price fell further and fell below the issue price. The ambitious goal of producing 8000 taxis has been adjusted to the more realistic 2000. In the course of savings, there were also layoffs. Horseless Age visited the plant in Hartford and reported with irritation that instead of "thousands of lead cabs " it had only found about 50, and some of them were in very busy condition.

Eventually it became public that a loan from the State Trust Bank in New York had come about under strange circumstances. The bank was controlled by Whitney. EVC shares were used as collateral. The documents were signed by an EVC director named Daniel H. Shea who, it turned out, was actually a clerk at Thomas Fortune Ryan . The process served to circumvent banking laws and led to an outcry in the media, combined with a further loss of confidence in the company. The New York Herald headlined "How an Office Boy Got $ 2,000,000" and noted that the lead trust's funding methods were gradually becoming apparent.

The subsidiaries also had problems. The Chicago manufacturing facilities were sold to General Electric . In 1901 the Illinois Electric Vehicle Transportation Company was liquidated. Instead of hundreds of taxis, she had operated 25.

A reorganization took place in 1901. The Columbia Automobile Company was temporarily run not as a company but as a division of EVC . The established brand names Columbia and Columbia Electric and, possibly and for a short time, Riker Electric remained. Hiram Maxim left the company at that time to work on the development of a silencer for firearms; later he also adapted the principle for exhaust systems and industrial uses.

Maxim's successor as chief engineer was Frederick A. Law . Under his leadership, the number of electrically powered models, which are hardly profitable to manufacture and increasingly difficult to sell, was reduced. Nevertheless, the Electric Vehicle Company got increasingly into trouble.

In the wake of the devastating earthquake in San Francisco in 1906 , Fire Brigade Commander John Dougherty telegraphed on April 24th to thank the Columbia 45-horsepower fire departments for their reliability . Three of them were in continuous use from April 18th to after April 24th, which they mastered without any problems.

From 1907 to 1908 there was a misleadingly "Magnetic" car with a gasoline-electric hybrid drive .

insolvency

In August 1907, managing director MJ Budlong resigned. In December 1907, EVC had to file for bankruptcy with debts of US $ 3.5 million. The bankruptcy itself, with unforeseeable consequences for the Selden process, was averted. The company recovered somewhat, but remained ailing. In 1908, Pope's empire also collapsed. In 1909 EVC was reorganized and renamed Columbia Motor Car Company . The name Electric Vehicle Company has now completely disappeared. At that time, five petrol and two electric vehicles were offered.

Reorganization as Columbia Motor Car Company

In 1909 the ALAM - and with it the Columbia Motor Car Company - won the Selden patent dispute in the first instance, but Ford challenged the judgment. After Pope's death in the same year, hopes were dashed for a new beginning and the Columbia Motor Car Company occurred after a fatal error of judgment by management in 1910 the United States Motor Company of Benjamin Briscoe in. This group, which was set up along the lines of General Motors and was chronically underfunded, went bankrupt in 1912 with around twelve affiliated brands, with spectacular consequences for confidence in the young auto industry. The Columbia Motor Car Company closed in 1913 and the only remaining subsidiary of the United States Motor Company , the Maxwell Motor Company , became the nucleus of the Chrysler Group.

Remarks

  1. ↑ As described by Kimes on Columbia (p. 357 in the 1996 edition); according to secondchancegarage.com: The Columbia Car: Reliable, Simple to Operate and Ready for Action - To The Electric Vehicle Trust . Pope brought in his Pope Manufacturing Company . That is less likely, however, because this is where the bicycle production, Pope's mainstay, took place. Pope's other automobile factories were also not part of the agreement.
  2. ↑ "They have become grotesque, and if they have any saving sense of honor," the editor wrote, "They will retire and leave the field to the mechanics and manufacturers to whom it rightfully belongs." The version by Greenleaf calls instead of sense of honor (sense of honor) sense of humor (sense of humor), which makes no sense in the context.
  3. ↑ For the sake of clarity, all automobiles and commercial vehicles manufactured between 1901 and 1909 under the brand names Columbia and Columbia Electric are treated under the Columbia Automobile Company .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Kirsch: The Electric Vehicle and the Burden of History. 2000, p. 35.
  2. ↑ a b c d Kimes, Clark: Standard Catalog of American Cars 1805-1942. 1996, p. 525.
  3. ↑ 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. 525 (English).
  4. ^ Kirsch: The Electric Vehicle and the Burden of History. 2000, p. 41.
  5. ↑ a b c d e f g h i Kimes, Clark: Standard Catalog of American Cars 1805-1942. 1996, p. 357.
  6. ^ Postscripts: I Invented the Automobile: The Bitter War over the Selden Patent.
  7. ↑ a b c d e f g secondchancegarage.com: The Columbia Car: Reliable, Simple to Operate and Ready for Action - To The Electric Vehicle Trust
  8. ^ A b c d Greenleaf: Monopoly on Wheels: Henry Ford and the Selden Automobile Patent , p. 66.
  9. ^ Seherr-Thoss: Dictionary of famous personalities in the automobile world. ; 2005, p. 41 (George H. Day)
  10. ^ A b Greenleaf: Monopoly on Wheels: Henry Ford and the Selden Automobile Patent , p. 67.
  11. ↑ Kimes: Pioneers, Engineers, and Scoundrels. 2005, pp. 79-81.
  12. ↑ Greenleaf: Monopoly on Wheels: Henry Ford and the Selden Automobile Patent , p. 68.
  13. ↑ kcstudio.com: AL Riker - The early story in brief.
  14. ↑ kcstudio.com: AL Riker - The early story
  15. ^ Greenleaf: Monopoly on Wheels: Henry Ford and the Selden Automobile Patent , p. 69.
  16. ↑ a b c d e Greenleaf: Monopoly on Wheels: Henry Ford and the Selden Automobile Patent , p. 72.
  17. ^ A b Greenleaf: Monopoly on Wheels: Henry Ford and the Selden Automobile Patent , p. 73.
  18. ↑ Encyclopedia Britannica: Hiram Percy Maxim.

literature

  • David A. Kirsch: The Electric Vehicle and the Burden of History. Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick NJ / London 2000, ISBN 0-8135-2809-7 . (English)
  • Ernest Henry Wakefield: History of the Electric Automobile; Battery-Only Powered Cars. Editor SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers). Warrendale PA 1970, ISBN 1-56091-299-5 . (English)
  • Beverly Rae Kimes (ed.); Henry Austin Clark Jr. Standard Catalog of American Cars 1805-1942. 2nd Edition. Krause Publications, Iola WI 1985, ISBN 0-87341-111-0 . (English)
  • 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 . (English)
  • William Greenleaf: Monopoly on Wheels: Henry Ford and the Selden Automobile Patent. Great Lakes Books / Wayne State University Press (March 15, 2011; first edition 1955); ISBN 0-8143-3512-8 . (English)
  • Beverly Rae Kimes: Pioneers, Engineers, and Scoundrels: The Dawn of the Automobile in America. Editor SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers). Permissions, Warrendale PA 2005, ISBN 0-7680-1431-X . (English)
  • James J. Flink: America Adopts the Automobile - 1895-1910. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1970, ISBN 0-262-06036-1 . (English)
  • Hans Christoph von Seherr-Thoss : Dictionary of famous personalities in the automobile world. Ivy House Publishing, Raleigh NC, USA, 1st edition; 2005; ISBN 1-57197-333-8 . (English)
  • George Nick Georgano (Ed.): Complete Encyclopedia of Motorcars, 1885 to the Present. 2nd Edition. Dutton Press, New York 1973, ISBN 0-525-08351-0 . (English)
  • Richard v. Frankenberg, Marco Matteucci: History of the Automobile. Sigloch Service Edition / STIG Torino 1973, DNB 760297916 .
  • Hans-Otto Neubauer (ed.): Chronicle of the automobile. Chronik Verlag in Bertelsmann Lexikon Verlag, Gütersloh / Munich 2004, ISBN 3-570-14338-4 .

Web links

Commons : Electric Vehicle Company (Hartford, Connecticut)  - Collection of pictures, videos, and audio files