Friends, Families & Forays: Scenes from the Life and Times of Henry Ford

20. Ford-Edison Electric Car

20 Ford-Edison Electric Car While working for the Edison Illuminating Company in Detroit, Henry Ford had put together his first automobile, the Quadricycle, which he drove on the streets of Detroit in the early morning of June 4, 1896. In August of that year, young Ford was sent as a delegate to the annual convention of the Association of Edison Illuminating Companies, which took place in the Oriental Hotel on Manhattan Beach, Long Island, New York. At the convention, Ford’s boss, Alex Dow, introduced him to Thomas Edison. When Ford described his gasoline car to Edison, he was both surprised and elated that Edison did not deride the gasoline car as inferior to an electric vehicle but instead praised the idea of a gasoline-fueled vehicle as being very practical. Ford was never to forget Edison’s encouragement at that crucial time of his life. He proceeded to go ahead with the gasoline car, gathering a respect for Edison that approached adoration. Although Edison had encouraged Ford regarding the gasoline car, the shortcomings of gasoline vehicles (dirty, smelly, complicated, and hard to start) were fully recognized by Edison. He was really a believer in electricity for motive power. One of Edison’s major experimental endeavors was electrochemistry . A self-educated chemist, Edison filled his laboratory at Menlo Park with bottles of nearly every substance available on earth. His experiments with telegraphy had necessitated chemical cells to provide electricity. As early as 1895, Edison had built a three-wheel electric automobile and was attempting to develop batteries suitable for propelling vehicles of various descriptions — streetcars, delivery trucks, and submarines. He realized that conventional lead-acid batteries were too heavy and short-lived to be entirely satisfactory. Edison was looking for metallic substances, lighter than lead, to be used with weak alkaline electrolytes rather than the corrosive sulfuric acid. He organized the Edison Storage Battery Company in 1902. By 1903, the year Ford Motor Company was founded, Edison had begun a long series of experiments to find a desirable electrical cell combination. 153 Previously published in the Dearborn Historian, Vol. 36, No. 1, 1996 By 1908, he had chosen a combination of nickel and iron plates in a solution of potassium hydroxide as being far superior to the lead-acid cells then in common use. Ford, on the other hand, annoyed with the problems of batteries for the Model T, was devising a flywheel magneto to supply electricity for gasoline engine ignition. Ford, however, depended on the hand crank for starting the motor. Charles F. Kettering had devised an electric starting system which he had sold to the Cadillac company in 1912. Ford and Edison decided they would develop their own electric starter using the new Edison nickel-iron battery. Edison had been quite successful with this new battery, and he should have been, because he is said to have spent 154 Said to be the first battery-powered electric automobile, this vehicle was built by Thomas Edison in 1895. Two electric motors producing 5 horsepower drive the front wheels. At the right of the seat, a tiller steers the vehicle by means of the rear wheel, and an electrical switch controls the speed of the car. The rear compartment contains the batteries. (B.14441) $1,750,000 in developing the battery and building a large manufacturing plant solely for battery production. This plant at Orange, New Jersey, was a four-story structure with 200,000 square feet of floor space. A trade catalog issued by the Edison Storage Battery Company in 1910 describes the battery in detail. Edison’s nickel-iron batteries became especially popular in powering trucks for city delivery use. They were also found useful in lighting railroad cars, in battery-operated streetcars, and especially in submarines because they did not emit toxic fumes as did lead-acid batteries. Not depending on gasoline, electric trucks could be operated inside buildings and on docks and terminals where gasoline was prohibited because of the fire hazard. Edison cells were of three types with ampere-hour output of 150, 225, and 300 and corresponding weights of 13, 20, and 25 pounds each. (A modern automotive lead-acid battery provides about 60 ampere-hours output.) The cells sold for almost exactly one dollar per pound —not inexpensive. These could be assembled in a variety of battery sizes, ranging from two cells to ten cells and fitted into trays 6...