What it’s Like to Drive a 100 Year-Old Electric Car

this is the most luxurious electric car today and this is the most luxurious electric car from 1909. that's right this electric car right here is 114 years old and I'm told it still works perfectly electric cars like this one have been with us since the dawn of the automobile why did it take a hundred years for electric cars to get good we're going to look at what A Century of technological advancement looks like oh yeah this guy's here welcome to Donut oh let's talk about what this ancient EV is and why it even exists it's a 1909 Baker Electric designed and built by the Baker Motor Vehicle company in Cleveland Ohio like many cars from that era it looks like a horse-drawn carriage and that's because the guy who designed it Walter C Baker got his start manufacturing axles for horse-drawn Vehicles so this design is just writing what you know check these fenders out job they're leather yeah what's up with that whoa look at the tapestries oh wow it really does look just like a horse run Carriage huh it's class of Horseless Carriage that's cool can you imagine a time when you would have to say that this car is not pulled by horses what can you tell us about this thing Jay when you look at the technology in this thing it looks really old-fashioned we just had electric lights in the vehicle when people did not have electric lights in their house yeah plus I guess 60 to 80 miles on a charge that's what I was wondering that's pretty good well yeah it wasn't bad at all because you're going pretty slowly I mean it was a different time when electricity came out it was easy to use so they marketed to women you know when you see the inside of this thing it's got all the Fufu interior so the idea that you'd buy one for your wife you know yeah it's so stupid yeah right Daddy give me a baker I like the guys wearing a suit and tie at his house on Christmas morning I got up nice and early yeah and we open presents Dad I gotta get ready it comes out of the bourbon back when this Baker was made the car scene was way different than it is today and not just because they hadn't invented colors yet steam cars like this one made up 40 of the cars in the United States the next best-selling alternative was electric cars 15 000 of those early EVS were in New York City where Thomas Edison had built the very first power station and that supplied juice to a network of EV charging stations like this one you know people complain now that it takes six seven hours to charge yeah this would have been 24 hours yeah 48 hours you can drive again on Wednesday early EVS had some distinct advantages over their Steam and gasoline-powered competitors gas and steam cars had complicated and dangerous starting procedures cranking a combustion engine could break bones if you weren't careful and if you're wearing flowy clothing as was popular at the time it could get caught and even be deadly that's right there are verified cases of those crank starters killing people the most famous One one he pulled it the car started his own fist came around smashed his face broke his jaw he died of blood poisoning in the hospital but cranky really wasn't that bad yeah you know starting a car well you were mending yeah one crank I've always wanted to try myself right well we could do that today should we do it right now right here we've got a Model T right here Jay is gonna give us the honor of trying to crank this thing over I've I've never done this before me neither hopefully we leave with all our wrists intact yeah I don't want to punch myself in the jaw there we go okay oh so now it's ready yeah yeah go for it and just pull up and let go give it a pull nope you got to push it in so it makes contact I see no and then no I'll catch it down at the bottom okay don't be afraid of it son but I I'm pretty frightened hey you see I mean that's really what it was it wasn't that big a deal yeah no not too bad especially when you know what you're doing you got somebody to show you the ways Steam and gas powered cars also burn volatile fuels creating even more danger and making them loud smelly and downright annoying in dense cities like New York electric cars on the other hand were widely considered to be the most reliable most luxurious and the safest vehicles on the road with all of ev's benefits though there is also a pretty major drawback it might sound familiar it's the price at a time when the average salary was just 750 a year the Baker Electric had an asking price of 2700 bucks that's over 82 thousand dollars in today's money but electric cars didn't try to injure you every time you start them you simply turn them on by well how do you turn this thing on a series you've got a key you turn the key yeah lovely yeah bikini you have a big metal plug that's a circuit breaker you put that in that juices at all [Music] uh that thing just pulled away and I didn't even notice I mean I guess it makes sense of course it's silent it's an electric car but you just don't expect that from the era wow there it goes dude it looks really cool in motion though I love that it's gonna be very funny with all three of us in there I know it's gonna be a tight ride something for your legs [Music] are in the baker I I love it so you might have noticed that there's no steering wheel in here so how do you even drive it well with this thing a Rudder just like on a boat and this is the throttle no seat belts or any safety equipment whatsoever top speed is about 25 miles an hour so let's hope Jay knows how to drive this thing let me get out of your way there Jay I can see too so if anything's coming I'll just start screaming as soon as the last time you had this car out a couple weeks ago yeah just kind of putt around in it for fun or yeah just take it out like if you go to lunch and if you're not in any hurry yeah it's actually quite relaxed yeah drive along in on you yeah plenty of window space just chugging along and basically a little tiny living room a little parlor yeah seems to put people in a good mood too you know but you know in the city this is about what you do yeah like what I would take just to work from my house in the morning when I look at the freeway if there was Bumper to Bumper oh I get on because you'd be going this way and I go I go two exits oh man I can't imagine this thing pulling up next to me at you know 7am and crazy traffic what did you say range was roughly like 60 miles yeah 68 it's pretty good not bad I mean that would work for me yeah especially if you imagine in the early 1900s say maybe you need to do 10 miles round trip you know most people never left it right yeah and so you know things like this opened up a whole new world so to speak but it must have been incredible for when these kind of cars are coming out you might not even have electricity in your home right and then you see this thing rolling down the street and a pretty good clip yeah it was just a symbol of the 20th century what was coming right so the idea that with nothing pulling it it's just self-propelled just floating along a total Paradigm Shift yeah for 100 year old car this thing is honestly way smooth other and easier to operate than I expected so why did it fail by 1912 there were 20 different EV manufacturers with over 30 000 electric vehicles in registration things were looking good for the electric car despite some pretty big flaws EVS thrived in the city where their limited range wasn't really a problem like it was for people in the country the city was also where all the Chargers were not out in the sticks and EV buyers were largely from the upper class so they didn't really bulk at the premium price but surprisingly it wasn't ranged charging or price that would Doom the EV ironically it was the electric starter that foretold the death of the electric car one of the people who had lost their life in a crank starting accident happened to be a friend of Henry Leland who was the founder of Cadillac and it was one of his own cars a Cadillac which had killed his friend so Leland reached out to the Dayton engineering Laboratories company better known as Delco and asked them to develop an electric starter for all new Cadillac Vehicles electric starters were then rapidly adopted by every other car company meaning you could now start a gasoline-powered car with just the turn of a key you didn't have to worry about breaking your wrist or even dying just trying to get your engine started anymore was electric starters on all cars [Music] with electric starters on all cars the other drawbacks of EVS began taking a toll gasoline simply offered better range and had caught up with EVS on power with mass-produced cars Like the Model T internal combustion now came at a far lower price as well when oil was discovered in Texas in the 1920s EVS were cut off at the knees at rhymed and that didn't mean for that to happen by the mid-1930s the market for EVS and iconic EV makers like Baker had disappeared it would be another four decades before automakers started considering electric power again EV hype powered by climate concerns made a comeback in the 90s with GM producing the ev1 although that never fully made it to the market then in the early 2000s a new player came onto the scene and they were sure they could do an EV for real and their name was Tesla Tesla's first production car was based on the Lotus Elise with a shockingly powerful electric drivetrain the Tesla Roadster made waves in the automotive media but because of the high price and limited production it failed to crack the mainstream but it did show the industry that Tesla wasn't to be trifled with Tesla's next car would be more practical and affordable a Sleek sedan taking aim at the German luxury Elite in 2009 Tesla hired X jaguar and Lotus engineer Peter Rawlinson to lead the project and in 2012 the Tesla Model S debuted featuring the latest in Battery Technology and range estimates unlike any EV that had come before it their cars were expensive sure but EV technology could now meet the expectations customers have demanded since the electric starter killed the EV nearly a hundred years prior as with any new market with the Innovation came the competition in 2007 a company called atiba was founded they focused on developing batteries and electric motors for other automakers in 2013 they offered a job to Peter Rawlinson the same man who led the development of the model S in 2016 ativa changed their name to Lucid Motors and announced they'd be making their own car five years later in October 2021 they followed through on that promise and began deliveries of their Flagship model building City Air many of the people Peter Rawlinson worked with at Tesla joined him at Lucid for this project Peter describes the design process for this car as taking everything he learned with the model S and improving on it that's cool it's amazing the basic idea was to Simply build a Tesla feeder one simple example of this is the trunk whoa what yeah the model S has a hatchback but Peter understood that a trunk greatly increases rigidity and rigidity improves handling so they went with that instead [Music] [Music] Jesus now we're living now that's luxury dude so this is the current top of the line the air Grand Touring performance or GTP and it does have the pee doesn't it it does have the P makes 1050 horsepower hits 0-60 in 2.7 seconds and runs the quarter mile in 10 seconds flat at 145 miles an hour uh those are Supercar numbers to be sure fast as hell fast as hell it's extremely fast yeah it has massage seats and uh fans in my butt's cold is what I'm trying to say yeah I'm currently being massaged and having my buns cool at the same this is lucid luxury I'm going to cut right into the chase job do it I love this thing it's awesome that this is even a big surprise what do you mean Joe no one likes the 100. it's great this model has a range of just over 400 miles which is a lot yeah but at 400 plus miles you're not thinking they're not worried about that you're minding your day-to-day business no problem yeah interior is really nice it's spacious as hell there's so much leg room it's insane yeah it's it's very roomy that's how you know it's a lot of whatever you're talking about yeah all in all I think this is a great package it is luxurious it is fast it is comfortable yes but it comes at a cost yes this thing costs a hundred and eighty thousand dollars like the original Baker the Lucid exists during a weird time in the car industry the looming threat Now isn't other fuel sources like steam or sweet Texas Crude it's the price according to Kelly Blue Book the average price of an electric vehicle was 61 488 compared to 49 507 for a conventional car at the end of 2022. if the Lucid air is the Baker Electric EV manufacturers need to be looking over their shoulders for the next Model T one thing no one takes into account is you really can't predict the future when I was a kid by this time we'll be wearing silver suits we'd have like a blue pill for dinner you wouldn't sit down yeah oh you'd have flying cars 25 years ago they said it would take 50 to 100 years to switch to Electric yeah well now we've done it in by 2030 Cadillac's not making gas cards anymore you know so the internal combustion engine is a pretty efficient machine we just don't like the fuel it runs out nobody really has a problem with the car if suddenly some new synthetic fuel made from dirt just some product we have plenty of all bets are off there and then and then you're back at square one again so it's an interesting time to be alive here you go better than being dead that's right on that note thank you so much for watching thank you Jay thanks guys thanks for coming by I appreciate it make sure you subscribe to Jay Leno's Garage on YouTube Jay's back in control baby wow it's on yeah go check out the channel right now we'll leave the link down in the description we'll see you next time thanks for watching

Channel: Donut

Views: 1,907,831

Keywords: donut, donut media, cars, james pumphrey, up to speed, moneypit

Id: bsulOhzmNJE

Length: 14min 21sec (861 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 19 2023

Reddit Comments

[u/_Los]

I really like Donut's content offerings a lot more when Pumphrey isn't involved. He's not bad per se, but his deliver and antics are just grating.

[u/blackashi]

Every donut video on this sub seems to turn into a channel critique.

My 2c. They're fine and I like all of them. They all bring unique characters and I'm really happy donut Media let's them show a bit of themselves instead of the sanitized rehearsed bs most YouTube videos are these days.

[u/ExtensionAd2828]

most cars were electric until ww1/oil industry took off. they had charging stations and everything. the first porsche was a hybrid iirc

we are finally recovering from that 100 year dark age

[u/[deleted]]

Mercedes EQS and BMW i7 would like a word with that first sentence.