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A Fifth Avenue group, showing two miniatures and an electric.
social disfavor and impatience of bother
foreseen by Doctor Steinmetz are more
likely to give touring its coup de grace than
the invincible leisureliness of Mr. Edison's
favorite vehicle.
The real trouble with electric touring is
the high cost of combining speed with
mileage. The vehicles able to go one hundred
miles on a charge weigh four thousand
pounds and cost nearly three thousand
dollars. One may get a gasolene
car, weighing one thousand five hundred
pounds and costing seven hundred and
fifty dollars or less, which will go both
farther and faster on a tankful of gasolene.
The owner of an electric must shape his
route, willy-nilly, with an eye to chargingstations
and good roads. The gasolenecar
owner may start in the morning, ride
all day in any direction, and find gasolene
and oil wherever he happens to be at night.
And who of us, on an open road, or a little
behind his schedule, is willing to give up
that seldom-used but invaluable reserve
of speed?
No; I fear that, with all its admirable
qualities—qualities that have made it the
city vehicle par excellence for those who
can afford it—you and I will not live to
see the electric car a popular favorite for
touring, save, perhaps, among elderly persons
well blessed with time and money
and wishing to avoid all semblance of excitement.
What, then, of the utility runabout predicted
by Doctor Steinmetz? Surely a
million or two of these will not be too
many to satisfy an eager public! Yet if
you propound this idea to a maker of electric
vehicles he will reply with a tinge of
sarcasm that he already has more than
enough of just such vehicles—not new, to
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