sold $550.000 1988 electric car: columbia electric car

sold $550.000 1988 electric car: columbia electric car

It this great 1899 Columbia Electric Landaulet, this past summer at an RM Auctions sale, setting an electric vehicle record of $550,000. this is a world record for the oldiest electric car, the most question that on your mind is, electric car was created and produced on 1899 it is true?

sold $550.000 1988 electric car: columbia electric car

 The answer is yes, this answer can be found in the old magazine electrical world and engineer. Electrical World and Engineer magazine in 1900 noted that electrics were the first vehicles to prove themselves in North America and that “it is generally conceded the electric vehicle in urban service where the mileage limitations of storage batteries need not be considered, has no rival.” But the author also felt gasoline-fuelled vehicles were more practical in most other areas of usage.

the Columbia might expect a range of perhaps 60 kilometres versus the estimated 160 for the Leaf. And the Leaf can wind itself up to 140 km/h while the Columbia can only manage about 20 km/h.

Although battery power meant the Columbia owner didn’t have to put up with nasty smelly gasoline and its rough, unreliable and noisy early engines, or deal with smooth but fiddly to operate and potentially explosive steam power, advancing technology meant it was gasoline that soon emerged as the dominant automotive power source.

sold $550.000 1988 electric car: columbia electric car

In the mid-1890s, founder Colonel Albert Pope had hired engineer Hiram Percy Maxim, the son of the inventor of the fully automatic machine gun, who had designed something that produced loud repetitive bangs himself, a three-cylinder engine he used to power a tricycle.

sold $550.000 1988 electric car: columbia electric car

Working for Pope, he soon re-jigged this into an electric-powered four-wheeler that the company began producing in 1897 under the Columbia name. By 1904, the newly created Columbia Automobile Co. of Hartford was selling 22 electric and three gas models.

Things were also getting a little complicated on the business side with Pope and various partners involved in the notorious Selden Patent, which claimed design rights on all automobiles and was used to hold the industry up for licensing contributions. It was subsequently overturned.

sold $550.000 1988 electric car: columbia electric car

With its Selden cash-flow gone, the Columbia company then became a pawn in another grandiose auto empire building scheme, but with interest in electrics waning and facing other problems, it was forced to close its doors in 1913. Just 27,000 Columbia-badged vehicles in total were built.

sold $550.000 1988 electric car: columbia electric car

Designer Maxim – an early amateur “ham” radio pioneer and also responsible for creation of the gasoline-powered Columbia models – later parlayed muffler development into the invention of the “silencer” for rifles and pistols.

so this invetion has get right price from now, no need luxcury car like BMW or Volvo to get luxcury car, just the old eletric car with the simple technology