Electric car from 1912 that had a better range than iMievs

[olagon]

Interesting story! http://www.veva.bc.ca/detroit/index.php

Hope our batteries last this long!

"The front and rear compartments were filled with the optional Nickel-Iron batteries which gave it a range of close to 100 miles. The still fully-operational batteries finally had to be replaced in the late 1980s due to the Bakelite cases starting to leak."

 

[siai47]

Interesting---thanks for posting. It says the range is between 65 and 100 miles but it sure wouldn't do that at full speed (20 mph). The instructions say 15 mph gives the best range. I think our I-MiEV's might beat this car for range if driving 15 mph on a level road. The batteries are amazing for their life---we'll never see 68 years out of ours. Edison had something going but we might have a little higher power density.

 

[Don]

They had a program on Nova this evening about electric cars. They went for a spin in Jay Leno's 1908 Baker Electric. It had a top speed of 22 mph and a range of 60 to 100 miles. Jay mentioned that back in those days, there were electric cars all over New Your City and they had recharging stations all over the city too - He has one of the original charging stations in his garage. Few people drove very far outside of Manhattan - That's where the rich folks lived and in 1908, you had to be pretty rih to drive any sort of car, but especially an electric car

Don

 

[PeterC]

A 1917 Detroit Electric in Australia recently had LiFePO4 cells installed in its original battery box and has a 100mile range according to its owner. Top speed is 60kph (That's about 35mph, I think). Original motor going well.

 

[peterdambier]

LiFePO4 can get very old. They even survive deep discharge if bottom balanced. I am sure they are the right cells to replace the original Edisons.

The specs say, max torque up to 2000 rpm at 30 km (20 miles) per hour and max power up from 2500 rpm at 40 km (25 miles) per hour. So rolling downhill at 2000 rpm might give us max electricity back and climbing steep hills 2500 rpm might even be better. 45 km per hour feels good and proposed some 164 kilometers to Karin and me. I guess we would rather have got some 135 but I did not want to exercise the batteries without need. It was up and down hills and sometimes we were speeding up to some 65 km per hour. I did not count traffic lights and roundabouts.

Cheers
Peter and Karin

 

[fjpod]

Obviously, a car that can only go 20 mph is not a car in today's world. If we drove our iMievs at 15 mph, the range would be in the 150-200 mile range...not 62. The batteries of Edison's day needed constant maintenance and upkeep by a semi-skilled laborer, whereas the batteries in the iMiev are expected to last beyond 100,000 miles without attention. If Edison's car had to be graded by the EPA today, it wouldn't be given a range of 10 miles...in fact, It wouldn't even be considered roadworthy.

There is no point in comparing today's iMiev to an old bucket of bolts.

 

[aarond12]

Wow. That charger doesn't look exactly... safe...

http://www.veva.bc.ca/detroit/detroit-charger.jpg

In the "Most Efficient Speed" thread, our i-MiEVs could theoretically go 500+ miles at 25 MPH.

http://myimiev.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=13726