On September 13, 1899, Henry H. Bliss was helping a companion out of a streetcar when he was struck and killed by a New York City taxi. We’re still talking about it today because Henry Bliss was the first person to die in an automobile accident in North America, and what’s even more interesting about the occasion is that the taxi itself was 100% electric. In 1899. Before you start linking together OPEC conspiracies to keep America addicted to oil and dust off your DVD copy of Who Killed The Electric Car?, let’s take a closer look at the electric taxis of turn-of-the-century New York City.
In July of 1897, the Electric Carriage and Wagon Company introduced twelve fully electric taxis to New York City streets. They weren’t exactly cutting-edge as they were simply refit Hansom cabs without the horses in front. (Hansom cabs had been around since the 1830’s. They got their name from their inventor, Joseph Hansom, and the fact that they were cabriolets, which literally means “a light 2-wheeled one horse carriage.” Innovative cab drivers later installed Taximeters, or charge-measurers, giving us the modern term “Taxicab.”) These horseless Hansom cabs didn’t even outperform their predecessors. Toting 800 pounds of batteries meant they couldn’t travel faster than 15 miles per hour and they had to turn in for a charge, which took 8 full hours, every 25 miles or so. Like Hansom cabs, the driver was perched in the back while passengers rode in a cab about a foot off the ground at the front of the vehicle. Unlike Hansom cabs, this cab was open to the elements with only a knee-high piece of thin metal protecting the passenger from anything the taxi might come into contact with, like streetcar passengers.
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| Note the driver's seat perched high to the right and the exposed passenger cabin. |
By the time Mr. Bliss had his unfortunate first and last encounter with an electric taxi in 1899, there were over one hundred of them on the streets of New York. While they were praised from afar for being odorless and quiet, even picking up the nickname “hummingbirds” for the electrical whizzing sound they made, they weren’t exactly popular with passengers. In his book Taxi!, Graham Hodges notes “many people took one ride but rarely returned for a second, preferring horse-drawn hacks.” Imagine weaving in and out of traffic with no windscreen to protect you and your clothes from the dust and detritus, and when you reach your destination and the driver applies the front wheel brakes the whole 800-pound affair threatens to topple forward right on top of you. It’s not hard to imagine why passengers were so fond of sticking with tried and true horse drawn carriages.
Electric cabs persisted in New York, mostly as a novelty, but suffered a near fatal blow when a fire at the Electric Carriage and Wagon Company destroyed three hundred taxis. The company never recovered and went bust shortly thereafter. Despite their moderate success as taxis, they had never caught on as personal cars. Much like the complaints about electric cars today, the range wasn’t long enough and charging was too cumbersome, especially when many people didn’t even have electricity in their homes. As gasoline and the internal combustion engine came to prominence the electric car faded away, so much so that many don't realize the origins of modern automobiles were shockingly electric.
