February 15, 2021 BARRON’S 19
100 YEARS OF BARRON’S
Electric Vehicles Were
A Nonstarter—Until
Tesla Came Along
I
t was 1959, the dawn of the Space Age,
and a half-dozen companies were “racing
to bring out the first electric automobile
in a half-century,” according toBarron’s.
Leading the way was the Nu-Klea Star-
lite, a new electric model being billed as
an “economy car”—a concept so novel
thatBarron’sput it in quotation marks.
“Simply by plugging the car into an electric
outlet each night, thereby recharging the batter-
ies, the owner can drive about 80 miles the next
day at a cost of no more than 20 cents,”Barron’s
marveled.
But the Starlite fizzled, and no other success-
ful EV emerged from this short burst of enthusi-
asm. And so it would continue for the rest of the
century—high hopes dashed by lack of vision,
willpower, and funding. It took a new millennium
and a “green-powered cruise missile” known as
the Tesla Roadster to finally show the way to a
new electric golden age.
The first golden age of the EV was a short one,
lasting the first decade or so of the 20th century.
“The stately, battery-powered sedans of the pre–
World War I era,”Barron’swrote, appealed
mostly to well-to-do urbanites. President Wood-
row Wilson drove around the White House
grounds in his Milburn Electric.
Unlike gasoline-powered cars, EVs rode clean
and silent, with little effort or maintenance
needed. But they lacked speed (25 miles an hour)
and range (60 to 70 miles per charge), largely
because the batteries were so heavy.
The first electric age effectively ended in 1915,
after Henry Ford and Thomas Edison teamed up
to take a crack at EVs. The result: “The vehicles
were too slow, too heavy, and too costly,” accord-
ing toBarron’s. “The project was dropped.” If
Ford and Edison couldn’t pull it off, who could?
That’s pretty much where things still stood in
1959, when the Starlite made its
disappointing debut. EVs weren’t
abandoned—there were golf carts
and British “milk floats”—but the
dream of an electric passenger car
was deferred for decades.
Fast-forward to 1968, whenBar-
ron’sreported that GM, Ford, and
Chrysler, “stung by criticism” over
“the fumes their gasoline buggies
spew into the air,” were boasting
about their research on “smogless
vehicles.” The big hope this time was
a Union Carbide electric motorcycle,
which clocked 25 mph and was dem-
onstrated by a “dignified, gray-haired
chemist” dressed “in a paratrooper
jacket and white crash helmet” who
“rode slowly around in circles” on
the sidewalk in front of the com-
pany’s New York office.
The motorcycle was “strictly
experimental,” and Detroit’s Big
Three had nothing of their own to
offer except vague promises of elec-
tric passenger vehicles that might be
ready for commercial production in
“10 or 15 years,”Barron’swrote. That
was optimistic.
A
nother decade passed. Then,
on June 13, 1977,Barron’s
cited “renewed interest in
EVs,” this time because of
concerns about the oil embargo and
air pollution. Yet the only assembly-
line producer of EVs was Sebring-
Vanguard, whose CitiCar two-seater
“boasts a top speed of 38 miles per
hour and can go about 40 miles per
charge.” The CitiCar was so flimsy,
Barron’swrote, “it’s not allowed on
major highways.”
Some 13 years later, in 1990, GM
CEO Roger Smith, “desperate for a
piece of good news on which to end
his career,” asBarron’sput it, intro-
duced a new EV program with great
fanfare. But the effort didn’t yield a
car until 1996—the General Motors
EV1, a two-seater with an initial
range of just 60 miles. GM pulled the
plug on production in 1999, sparking
controversy detailed in the documen-
tary,Who Killed the Electric Car?
By 2002, the big car makers knew
that the gasoline engine was “rum-
bling into its twilight years,” with
Ford, GM, and the then Daimler-
Chrysler spending “well over $1 bil-
lion a year on new-engine technolo-
gies,” including hybrids,Barron’s
wrote. Led by Toyota’s Prius, there
were 50,000 hybrids on U.S. roads.
The modern EV era begins with
Tesla and CEO Elon Musk, a vision-
ary no less audacious than Ford or
Edison. Musk’s goal is “an electric-
car revolution,” and instead of build-
ing another niche economy EV, Musk
shot for the moon with a high-end
sports car, the Tesla Roadster.
Barron’sunderestimated the
power of Musk’s revolution. A 2013
cover story panned the stock, sug-
gesting that Tesla’s fans “are view-
ing its prospects through 3-D
glasses.” Musk hung up on us dur-
ing an interview for the story. Tesla
stock, then a split-adjusted $23, is
now above $800.
The revolution is clearly under
way. GM stunned the industry last
month with a plan to eliminate inter-
nal-combustion engines by 2035. Ford
is back in the game with the beautiful
and fast Mustang Mach-E. Apple
could be next.
If only Edison could see it all
now.B
By KENNETH G. PRINGLE
Sebring-Vanguard’s CitiCar two-seater, pictured above in 1974, was so flimsy that “it’s not
allowed on major highways,”Barron’swrote. Below, Henry Ford, left, and Thomas Edison,
circa 1930.
On This Week
Feb. 16, 1987:Wall Street reels as three arrested
in “Goldman-Kidder insider-trading scheme.”
Feb. 13, 1933:Short-selling curbs
prevent “natural functioning of
bear forces,”Barron’ssays.
top) Marion S. Trikosko/Library of Congress; (bottom) Detroit Publishing Co./Library of Congress