Posted on 03/11/2012 10:59:59 PM PDT by Impala64ssa
Meet the Roberts electric car. Built in 1896, it gets a solid 40 miles to the charge — exactly the mileage Chevrolet advertises for the Volt, the highly touted $31,645 electric car General Motors CEO Dan Akerson called “not a step forward, but a leap forward.”
The executives at Chevrolet can rest easy for now. Since the Roberts was constructed in an age before Henry Ford’s mass production, the 115-year-old electric car is one of a kind.
But don’t let the car’s advanced age let you think it isn’t tough: Its present-day owner, who prefers not to be named, told The Daily Caller it still runs like a charm, and has even completed the roughly 60-mile London to Brighton Vintage Car Race.
If you didn’t know there are electric cars as old as the Roberts, you aren’t alone. Prior to today’s electric v. gas skirmishes, there was another battle: electric v. gas v. steam. This contest was fought in the market place, and history shows gas gave electric and steam an even more thorough whooping than Coca-Cola gave Moxie.
But while the Roberts electric car clearly lacked GPS, power steering and, yes, air bags, the distance it could achieve on a charge, when compared with its modern equivalent, provides a telling example of the slow pace of the electric car.
Driven by a tiller instead of a wheel, the Roberts car was built seven years before the Wright brothers’ first flight, 12 years before the Ford Model T, 16 years before Chevrolet was founded and 114 years before the first Chevy Volt was delivered to a customer.
As the New York Times reported September 5, “For General Motors and the Obama administration, the new Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid represents the automotive future, the culmination of decades of high-tech research financed partly with federal dollars.”
Like “green technology’s” most powerful proponent, President Barack Obama, the 1896 Roberts was made in Chicago. Obama, who supports the $7,500 tax credit for the Volt, is not fazed by its 40-mile electric limit — he only drove the car 10 feet.
Chevy Volt gets same mileage as 115 year old technology.
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one of the things that drives me crazy about libtards is they hate the notion of an oilwell scaring the pristine land, so the propose a 5 million acre solar array that produces 1/4 of the energy.
They upset the natural landscape on a HUGE scale, they get 1/4 of the output AND you have to keep traditional energy sources in place to cover the 75% outage
How is this better?
They were all leased.
GM determined they were unsafe and had them crushed.
“Who killed the electric car” is Left-wing Propaganda.
Diesel is even better.
Dump french fry grease in it, boil down pork lard it dont care
Catfish fat, nut oil what ever
I am sure the Roberts car meets all current safety regulations and has all the luxuries of the Volt.
Plus has a range extender that can have you travel from LA to NYC.
I imagine that those 1890s cars were a lot lighter than today’s models. When I was a kid we had a 1928 Model A Ford, it was definitely lighter than a Ford today.
Oh, the liberals are in on it, for a variety of reasons.
But the bottom line is that huge sums of our money are being channeled to people for yet another 'green' boondoggle, and the only real 'green' involved is what is getting skimmed, kicked back, and raked in.
Solar and Wind energy are proving to be the same sort of scam, and the Looting of AmericaTM continues...
the F-35 has the same range and payload as the Stuka (Ju-87). It does have a certain advantage in range and accuracy.
Yes, but what is the maximum speed of a Roberts Electric Car? And can it even go up a hill with less horsepower than most hand-pushed lawnmowers? And how far could it go on a charge in 1896? It seems rather unlikely that it still has the original batteries.
I still say steam is the way to go...we could burn dried algae...or cow poops.
To be fair, the Volt probably has a lot more regulated baggage on board, which should count for some sort of improvement in performance. Then again, there’s that whole catching-on-fire thing...
Wasn’t GM getting more than 40 with their car n the early 90s?
I suppose the Roberts will run on its gas engine once it gets past the 40 mile electric limit?
What? It can’t?
Jack Benny drove a Maxwell, which eventually became Chrysler. I don’t know if they ever had an electric car though.
Ha, ha, ha! We told you so! The incompetent do not know that they are incompetent — Democrats all!
Just think. If Maxwell stayed in business and started to build weird looking microcars, they could have built the Maxwell Smart.
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