Henry Morris was a mechanical engineer who teamed with chemist Pedro Salom to produce electric streetcars in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. However, they were not all that successful, and so they decided to turn to personal battery road vehicles instead. The Morris and Salom Electrobat automobile that resulted had its moments in electric car history, which we share here.
The First Morris and Salom Electrobat Automobile
The first Morris and Salom Electrobat automobile not a great success in 1894 either. This was because they based it on a scaled-down battery streetcar, and it turned out ineffective.
- The first Electrobat was slow and impractical, because it had large steel tires.
- The large lead battery weighed 1600 pounds, making it electrically inefficient.
However, Salom and Morris were not going to let that deter them. Perhaps they already knew that science is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration, and Edison made a thousand experiments to perfect his light bulb. Whatever the case, the two men knuckled down and produced a refined Electrobat in 1895.
Salom and Morris Follow Through With More Improvements
Subsequent Electrobat electric cars had lighter bodies with pneumatic tires. They steered by their rear wheels, and boasted two electric motors of 1.1 kilowatt power each. This enabled them to achieve speeds of 20 miles-per-hour, and cover 25 miles between recharges.
And then they innovated further by venturing into hansom cabs. providing fast effective transport which was all the rage. They built around a dozen of them. They competed successfully with horse-drawn cabs in New York and Boston, before they sold their business a few years on.
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