Pic-A-Day (22) Albert Mach Fine Art.
Historic electric auto.

As a little different kind of post for today, here is a historical image of an Electric auto.

This came from a collection of historic Ford images and was supposed to be at a Ford facility.

I don’t think it was made by Ford however. Maybe someone has some knowledge they can share about this.

Some research says:

In 1908 Henry Ford bought his first Detroit Electric, a model C coupe. It was for his wife Clara and had a special child seat for Edsel.

In 1910 the Ford family bought their second Detroit Electric. According to the shipping ledger it was sold to Edsel Ford. (I wonder about the dates and info. Was Edsel still a child?) It was a model D Brougham shipped March 8th 1910 with a blue leather interior, a silk satin headliner, and an all blue exterior.

In 1912 Henry Ford bought a third Detroit Electric (model 47) for Clara that they never sell.

At http://www.detroitelectric.org/ it says:

Thomas Edison and Henry Ford decided to work together to make the electric car the main transportation in U.S.. Their goal was to have charging stations where people could "fill up" their cars. In 1914 Edsel Ford was given the task of looking into electric car production. He had two prototypes made with guidance from Edison, but the concept was not developed. Henry's wife Clara refused to drive gasoline cars or "explosion cars" as they were called (mostly by electric car salesman). Henry bought Clara a new Detroit Brougham every two years from 1908 to 1914. Ford Museum owns that last car and a 1922 that was donated later. Her 1914 model 47 resided at Fair Lane from 1914 thru the 1930's. There is 1 1915 currently on display at the Ford museum in Detroit. The 1915 is on loan and belonged to Helen Joy, the wife of a Packard executive. Henry Ford was reportedly quoted saying that he would die a failure if he did not die broke and planned on spending his fortune to make the electric car the mainstay of American transportation. There are stories of mysterious fires at Edison's laboratories and the impression is that these were caused by the early oil cartels. Whether that is true or not I have no idea, other stories say the fire was mostly in an adjacent building and battery production was not significantly affected. No proof can be found to show any evidence that oil companies or other car companies had anything to do with the demise of the electric car. In fact the Rockefellers and others were buying them for their own use.