The inauguration of New York’s motorized taxi service on March 27, 1897, promised a cleaner solution. And this is because the first taxis in the Big Apple did not run on gasoline, but on electricity: it turns out that the car of the future has actually come from the past.
The idea of electric vehicles rolling around New York in the 1890s may sound like an inspirational fever dream. steampunk, but battery cars outsold their internal combustion counterparts at the dawn of the automobile era. Electric cars were quiet, clean and easy to drive. “Back then, you were lucky if a gasoline car started in the morning,” says Dan Albert, author of Are We There Yet? The American Automobile Past, Present, and Driverless [¿Hemos llegado ya? El automovilismo americano; pasado, el presente y sin conductor]:;”it was noisy, polluting and dilapidated, while an electric car started at the touch of a switch.”
During the 19th century, when electricity began to be used practically, it seemed capable of overcoming any challenge. “If you had asked people on the street what was going to happen, they would have said that electricity is this magical force,” says electric car historian David A. Kirsch, author of The Electric Vehicle and the Burden of History [El vehículo eléctrico y el peso de la historia]. “We take advantage of it for light. We take advantage of it for traction through the trolleybus. It is spreading everywhere, and now it is going to take us from one place to another.”
When Nikola Tesla was the only Tesla making headlines, the Electrobat emerged as the first commercially viable electric vehicle. Manufactured by Philadelphia (United States) engineers Henry Morris and Pedro Salom in 1894, this one-ton car was powered by a lead-acid battery, reached maximum speeds of 24 km/h and covered distances of up to 40 kilometers on a single burden.
Additionally, the pair devised an ingenious battery-swapping system inside an old Broadway skating rink to keep their cabins in continuous operation. Working with the efficiency of a NASCAR pit crew, employees maneuvered the vehicles with lifts and hydraulics like an overhead crane, yanking out 1,000-pound dead batteries and inserting new ones. The process lasted only three minutes. “It was much faster than changing a team of horses and probably as fast as what we would associate with filling a tank of gasoline today,” Kirsch says.
The duo’s Manhattan taxi service quickly gained popularity, especially among the upper echelons of society. Instead of selling their cars, Morris and Salom opted to rent them on a monthly or per-way basis through their company, Electric Wagon & Carriage Company.
The taxi fleet experienced substantial growth, going from a dozen vehicles in 1897 to more than 100 in 1899. The Electrobat proved to be the ideal city car due to its rapid acceleration and quiet handling. However, its speed and silence posed unforeseen problems. In May 1899, the press reported that taxi driver Jacob German had become the first automobile driver stopped for speeding, after traveling down Lexington Avenue at more than 30 kilometers per hour. Weeks later, an electric taxi fatally struck real estate agent Henry Bliss as he stepped off an Upper West Side streetcar. The first pedestrian hit never heard the Electrobat arrive.
Morris and Salom enlisted the support of wealthy investors, notably New York financier William Whitney, known for his success in electrifying the city’s streetcars. Under Whitney’s direction, the company merged with urban electric railroads and battery manufacturing companies to form a nationwide integrated electric transportation network.
The Electric Vehicle Company quickly expanded its taxi operations to large cities such as Philadelphia, Chicago, and Boston, eventually becoming the largest automobile manufacturer in the country. However, its rapid expansion proved unsustainable. Operations out of New York were poorly managed and investors felt cheated when an investigation by the New York Herald In late 1899 he revealed that the Electric Vehicle Company had obtained a loan fraudulently. The company’s stock plummeted and by 1902 it was virtually bankrupt.
The company’s collapse shocked the investment community and cast a shadow over the future of electric vehicles.
“What killed it was neither the idea, nor the technology, nor the business model,” says Albert; “it was the bad faith of the wheel sellers who were behind it.”
A devastating fire destroyed a significant part of the fleet. This, coupled with the economic turbulence of the Panic of 1907, dealt a definitive blow to electric taxis in New York, just as gasoline-powered vehicles were gaining momentum in the market. That same year, local businessman Harry Allen introduced a taxi service with 65 gasoline vehicles imported from France. Within a year, their fleet increased to 700 cars.
The internal combustion engine would power the next American century, but battery power is slowly making a comeback after a long detour. When 25 all-electric taxis began to circulate on the streets of New York in 2022, the car of the future arrived (again).
