Electrobat History

 Automotive manufacturer Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.USA From 1894 to 1897.

The Electrobat was the first successful electric automobile built in the 1890s in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

History

Mechanical engineer Henry G. Morris and chemist Pedro G. Salom conceived and built it in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1894. Both had experience in battery streetcars, and as the market for battery streetcars faded, they partnered up to create battery road vehicles. On August 31, 1894, their work was patented. It was a sluggish, heavy, impractical vehicle with steel tyres to sustain the 1,600-pound huge weight of its large lead battery. It was built as a tiny version of a battery streetcar. It was first produced in 1895. Morris and Salom formed the Morris & Salom Electric Carriage and Wagon Firm in 1896, claiming to be America's first electric car company.

Subsequent versions were lighter and had pneumatic tires, with bodies built at the Caffrey Carriage Company in Camden, New Jersey.

These cars steered by their rear wheels and had two 1.5-horsepower (1.1 kW) motors that propelled them 25 miles (40 km) per charge at 20 mph (32 km/h). Morris and Salom went on to build about a dozen Hansom cabs based on this vehicle, to compete with the horse-drawn cabs then in service in New York City; they operated in New York, Boston, and elsewhere. They sold the cabs and their concept to Isaac L. Rice, who reincorporated the enterprise as the Electric Vehicle Company (Elizabeth port, New Jersey), in 1897, and later became part of Pope's empire.