Trends in Transportation - Hydrogen and Fuel Cells: Advances in Transportation and Power - page 142

1,700 steam, 1,600 electric and 100 gasoline cars were made.
Many steam car developers did not get beyond building a few
hundred or thousands units, but many of the early gasoline car pioneers
became major manufacturers. Gottlieb Daimler, Henry Ford, Ransom Olds,
Carl Benz, William Durant (General Motors founder), James Packard and
John Studebaker are a few who played important roles in the early years
of autos.
Some of these began their work with electric cars. In Germany
Ferdinand Porsche, built his first car, the Lohner Electric Chaise, in 1898
at the age of 23. The Lohner-Porsche was a first front-wheel drive car with
four-wheel brakes and an automatic transmission. It used one electric
motor in each of the four wheel hubs similar to today's hybrid cars, which
have both gas and electric power. Porsche's second car was a hybrid, with
an internal-combustion engine driving a generator to power the electric
motors in the wheel hubs. On battery power alone, the car could travel 38
miles.
One invention that hurt the electric car was the self-starter for
gasoline engines. Engine cranking from the seat instead of the street
would eliminate a major advantage of the early electric cars. Charles
Kettering's starter caught on quickly and the sales of electrics dropped
to 6,000 vehicles, only 1% of the total, by 1913. In that year, sales of the
Ford Model T alone were over 180,000. Electric carmakers closed down
or united. There were almost 30 companies selling electrics in 1910 and
less than 10 at the end of World War I. A few, such as the industry leader
Detroit Electric, lasted into the 1920s.
An early hybrid was the Woods Dual Power coupe, which was
produced from 1917 to 1918. It had a four-cylinder gasoline engine next to
an electric motor. Woods had been manufacturing electric cars since 1899
and the company attempted the hybrid to stay in business. But the car was
expensive and its fuel economy was not an advantage since gasoline was
not expensive. Few were sold.
Before the electric car died the speed and range had been improved.
The last Detroit Electrics had a competitive top speed of 35 miles per hour
by the early 1920s. The light Dey runabout of 1917 was available for $985.
By 1926, there were more than 8 million automobiles in America
along with a new coast-to-coast federal highway (U.S. Route 40). By then
the electric car had lost most of its support.
Henry Ford was the father of mass production, but it was Alfred P
Sloan, Jr. the President of General Motors, who introduced the annual model