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Thread: 1909 Baker Electric

  1. #1
    What fresh hell is this? overpowered's Avatar
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    1909 Baker Electric

    Jay says this thing did 100 miles on a charge, which is pretty amazing for the time.



    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baker_Motor_Vehicle

    It's kind of amazing that they could do this in 1909 which was pretty good in the context of other cars of the period but it took a century for anyone to make a highly successful electric vehicle.

  2. #2
    Member Member 21Kid's Avatar
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    I just wonder where they'd be if the idea wasn't scrapped for petroleum cars.

    If they've had 100+ year of R&D... from competing companies...just imagine how much better they would be than the Model S.

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    Well, at under 1,000lbs and a 14mph top speed, the bar wasn't very high - but that was the pinnacle of DC motor and battery technology for decades. Just no competition for the relative ease of ICE construction and petrochem energy density. The big developments that let modern EVs do what they do evolved from smaller consumer devices - AC motors and PWM controllers and Li-Ion batteries all got invented and perfected making laptops and remote control cars and stuff. The auto industry isn't really responsible for much of anything there!

  4. #4
    What fresh hell is this? overpowered's Avatar
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    I thought Jay said this thing did 23mph, which is still not fast but it's more than 14mph. I think he also said that the Model T had a top speed of 45mph.

    Of course he also said that there weren't really roads, which is wrong. In major cities and a lot of not so major ones, roads had long since been paved smooth by 1909.

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    I could be wrong - perhaps a different Baker I'm thinking of. Land speed records were being set by electrics in the 100mph range, so 25mph certainly was achievable. Whether the roads to support that speed existed is a question since it's gotta take a while to hit 25mph with 1 or 2hp on tap, and whether maximum range was achievable at maximum speed is another. Maximum battery dump in 1909 probably wasn't very efficient. On that note, perhaps Jay's will do 25mph for 100 miles simply on the basis he's running modern batteries.

    Edit: 14mph is 23kmh, so perhaps there is confusion there as well. :shrug:

  6. #6
    Consultant KillerB's Avatar
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    Yeah, I doubt this has a 1909-era battery!

  7. #7
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    Sure, but I could totally see Jay hiring someone to make a painfully detailed replica. Of course, it's just as likely he build a totally custom li-po pack, so....

  8. #8
    What fresh hell is this? overpowered's Avatar
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    He talks about the batteries in the video. He does use modern batteries but he claimed that the original batteries developed for it by Edison worked just as well but required more maintenance than modern batteries. He mentioned that the modern batteries that he uses are deep cycle batteries which implies that they are lead-acid batteries like you buy for boats or RV's. These were the batteries of choice for electric conversions in the 90's and 2000's. Tesla kind of changed the electric car battery game by figuring out how to make a more affordable Li pack.

    As for the speed, given the narrow track and high center of gravity and primitive suspension, it probably wouldn't be a good idea to go very fast in that thing even if it could go fast.

    As 21kid said, imagine if we had a century of serious effort at development and improvement of electric cars like we've had for petroleum powered vehicles, electric cars might have been much more viable a long time ago.
    Last edited by overpowered; August 20th, 2016 at 11:44 AM.

  9. #9
    Junior Potato
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    I could hazard a guess that developments in safety would have moved at a lot faster pace if they were capable of 10-second 1/4 mile times in, say, the 1940s.

  10. #10
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    Quote Originally Posted by overpowered View Post
    As 21kid said, imagine if we had a century of serious effort at development and improvement of electric cars like we've had for petroleum powered vehicles, electric cars might have been much more viable a long time ago.
    Maybe, but I'm not so sure. We have been continuing to develop battery and motor technology for other applications for all this time. Perhaps if we had dedicated ourselves to electric vehicles all this time, there would have been more urgency to make better battery technologies, but I dunno, it's hard to say.

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