Automatic Electric — La voiture de Carr n'a duré qu'un an

On the face of it not a hard market for Carr to break into with a modern product, as metropolitan New York had the highest proportion of electric vehicles in the USA, according to a paper read at the National Electric Light Association meeting in 1921. However, they were not new and his competitors were well established. Reportedly at the end of 1920 there were 4262 electric vehicles in use there, out of 9157 recorded nationally and although 2339 were under a year old, 759 were already ten years old and the remainder were up to twenty-three years old.

Critical of users of older ones, the paper concluded that electric vehicles by then were not like those of 10 or 20 years before: “every feature of construction and equipment, from battery to motor, including steering gear and frame, had been improved.” Was that true of Carr’s cars, with what appears to be tiller steering - a feature, however, already well-known and deftly handled for a dozen or more years by women drivers of electric runabouts!?

Carr’s one notable competitor, of course: the Automobile Bureau of the New York Edison Co. was at the time a sponsor of electric vehicle exhibitions in New York City. He certainly missed the commercial boat, as by 1926 it was claimed that in America “the Electric Delivery Van is used to a far greater extent..., the delivery of ice cream, bread, laundry, coal, tea, and even chewing-gum is done by electric trucks.”

Wonder if your “Friday lady” was subjected to the same inflammatory opinion, expressed in the press in post-WWI Britain about working women motor drivers: “There are still a few women drivers of commercial and other cars in Liverpool, and ex-Service men, who have the misfortune to be unemployed, are demanding that the drivers' licenses should not be renewed in order that they may have the opportunity of getting a job. Frequently one sees women drivers of light vans, and whilst being fully sympathetic with the demands of the ex-soldiers for a job, elementary justice demands that women should have the right to drive if they want to. The real question is: "Why do employers give them a job?"