It almost seems like a “Back to the future”, the DeLorean that “lands” in the Far West in one of the films of the trilogy by director Robert Zemeckis. Yet, history reminds us – with amazement surely – that the first motor vehicles were not those powered by gasoline, but by electricity. And which, given the technological knowledge of the time, had avant-garde characteristics. Few people know that in the early 1900s, in the United States, 38% of vehicles on the road were electric and that all New York taxis at the time were battery-powered. Just as few people know that Italy played an important role in the development of electric vehicles, with a series of models that were also included in the “stables” of the Royals and that had more diffusion than petrol-driven cars. An electric car was in use, for example, for Queen Elena and senior Vatican prelates. (The latter fact was celebrated in 1903 by a cover of the “Domenica del Corriere” during the pastoral visit to Trezzo by the archbishop of Milan, Andrea Carlo Ferrari, aboard an electric car). Gabriele D’Annunzio himself was the protagonist in Florence, on the night of June 13, 1907, in a serious accident together with Count Larderel and his daughters. In fact, he risked ending up in the Arno in Piazzale della Regina due to the breaking of the steering wheel of Count Strozzi’s electric car.
To decree the end of electric cars, at the beginning of the 20th century, was the arrival in the USA of the now legendary Ford T, but above all by the fact that the prices of fossil fuels were highly competitive. Furthermore, for electric cars, there was the great problem of recharging – which still needs further development – and of autonomy, albeit considerable for the time: 80-120 kilometers. Finally, electric cars had a much lower speed than petrol ones: in the USA they managed to go at a maximum of 32 km / h.
The fact remains that the first prototypes of electric carriages with experimental engines date back to the beginning of the second half of the nineteenth century, about thirty years earlier than the first petrol cars, built in 1886 by Daimler & Benz. The invention of the electric car – actually little more than a motorized carriage – was about ten years earlier at the hands of Charles Jeauntaud in Paris. Electric cars at the turn of the century were used as omnibuses for hotels (in Rome, Come, Varese and other cities), as taxis and as commercial vehicles.
As mentioned, electric vehicles were also developed in Italy. Turrinelli built industrial vehicles and electric taxis in Sesto San Giovanni (Milan). And in Alpignano, in the early years of the last century, electric cars were produced under the brand of “Società Industriale Italana Dora”, with headquarters in Genoa. Founded in 1886 by Alessandro Cruto (inventor of the incandescent light bulb), the factory produced several electric vehicles and the advertisements of the time explained the details: “The ideal vehicle for cities and for ladies”. Electric cars used special high-capacity batteries, the same ones also mounted on truck models and even on the first electric trams. It was declaimed as “the cheapest car”. In general, each recharge cost three lire and guaranteed an autonomy of these vehicles of about 80 kilometers. The first electric car known in Italy, however, moved its wheels in Castelnuovo Garfagnana, in Tuscany. It was built between 1890 and 1891 by the engineer Francesco Boggio at the behest of Count Giuseppe Carli.
Battery electric vehicles during the early 1900s and for a time outperformed combustion vehicles. The most common reason was that electric vehicles produced less noise than cars with internal combustion engines. The technological limitations of electric vehicles, which presented problems of both battery charge and traction regulation, made petrol-driven cars triumph. The performance and comfort of gasoline-powered vehicles quickly rose to such a level that electric cars fell in the ranking of then-buyers’ preferences to a niche choice. It is estimated that, in the end, only 30,000 vehicles in circulation on a world scale adopted the battery system.
But certain records of the time were celebrated in an exhilarating way. Like that of the Marquis Raffaele Cappelli, member of the Parliament of the Kingdom of Italy, who in 1907 conducted a test of his “Ausonia” along arduous paths around the capital, with 6 people on board. Grottaferrata, Marino, Albano, along what was later called “the road of the lakes”, covered 62 kilometers in all. In a letter to Corriere della Sera, the Marquis Cappelli exalted the result obtained by stating that he did not think it possible to have such a performance. Instead he drove 22 kilometers more than was promised in his vehicle’s production contract.
Electric cars, therefore, well over 110 years ago. But there is another myth that the history of “green” motoring debunks and is that of “hybrid” vehicles, that is, those cars that integrate a traditional engine that recharges the batteries for electric traction and that already existed at the beginning of 1900. “Semper Vivus”, a car that had petrol engines powering a generator, which in turn produced electric current for propellers connected to the wheels, came to light in the early 1900s by Ferdinand Porsche ( which – it must be said – had launched the first four-wheel drive electric car at the World Exhibition in Paris in 1900): thus the first full Hybrid in history was born in 1901. In the period between 1900 and 1905 Porsche managed to sell only 11 cars hybrid. The selling price of the Lohner-Porsche “Mixte” – a commercial evolution of the Semper Vivus – was between 14,400 and 34,028 crowns depending on the bodywork and equipment, double that of cars with a combustion engine. Another production of “hybrid” cars was at the Officine Stigler in Milan. The “Turin electric car company”, in the summer of 1907 presented its Laudalet (luxury convertible car) under license from the French Kriéger (the heat engine powered the batteries, like the Porsche).
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