OTHER ELECTRIC VEHICLES.
In the Borough of Manhattan the electric cab has for about a year been too familiar a sight to attract attention. The cabs are not yet many in number. The Electric Vehicle Co. have some fourteen in operation, and the company also has a hundred more in construction or under contract.
The carriage made by The Barrows Electric Vehicle Company is peculiar in being a three-wheeler; the rear wheels are 28 inch, with 2 inch tires, thus approximating the bicycle wheel except in stoutness, while the front wheel, which is of 36 inches and has a 3 inch tire, carries a 1-horse power motor and 300 pounds of storage cells, another 100 pounds of cells being placed under the seat. The electric equipment is thus some 500 pounds total, four-fifths of this being borne on the front wheel, where it serves for traction. The motor gears by a 2½ inch rawhide pinion direct to a 28 inch gear fixed on the wheel rim, and the total weight of the vehicle is 700 pounds. There are three speeds forward and two backward; the run is about three hours, or 30 to 40 miles, on one charging. The price ranges from $600 to $1,200 for regular carriages, and $300 to $500 for what are called children’s carts. Interested with Mr. Barrows is Supervisor Dunton of Jamaica Township, well known to wheelmen and father of the goods roads system in Queens County.
BICYCLE
WITH MOTOR.
The Riker Company, at present of 45 York street, Borough of Brooklyn, have in use a half dozen and have a dozen under contract, at prices from $1,800 to $2,500, and say the difficulty is not to get orders, but to fill them, the reason for this being that the subject is still so new that everything must be devised and procured and construction is therefore slow. The Riker Electric Trap No. 1 won first prize on Narragansett track at the Rhode Island State Fair, Sept. 7, 1896, doing five miles in 11:28; this weighed 1,800 pounds, had a capacity of ten miles for four hours, and attained a speed of twenty-seven miles; it was crudely put together as most convenient, and had bicycle wheels with “direct” spokes, the drivers being provided with four tension rods running in a tangential direction midway between rim and hub. Wheels as now made are 32 inch front and 36 rear; speeds provided are 3 and 6 miles back and 3—6—12—15 miles forward. Distance run on one charging and cost of current per mile are about as with the Pope carriage; the general description of that will also answer for others of its class, and we might add here that no attempt is made to go into the technical description of any motor vehicle, as this could not be done except at great length and with detailed illustrations. Mr. Riker believes strongly in the carriage, mentioning its suitability for physicians, for example, because it does not involve exposing a horse to inclement weather; for safety in leaving in the streets when not having a driver with it, he makes his “safety plug,” a special lock with the Yale tumblers, so that the vehicle cannot be moved by its own power except after first inserting the owner’s key.
The gas engine has for years been in use for stationary service in England, and considerably by cycle makers, largely because of the low price of gas in the Kingdom. These engines depend on the familiar principle that hydro-carbon vapors are explosive when mixed with air in certain proportions. As employed in driving boats or vehicles, the operation is essentially the same as long familiar in shops; the engines are explosion engines, driving the shaft only by the outward thrust of the piston and commonly making only each second or fourth movement effective, the remaining movements being consumed in restoring the mechanism to its original condition, these recurring acts being known as a “cycle” of changes. Hence a flywheel is required, and the driving power is irregular and by recurrent throb or thrust rather than by the usual reciprocal movement of an engine.
In England a great impulse was doubtless given to autocars by the London to Brighton run, Nov. 14, 1896, to celebrate the date when the new “Light Locomotives act” took effect, permitting speed up to fourteen miles an hour. This occasion is claimed by an American maker to have been a race, and won by him; the Scottish Cyclist account calls it a parade, in which 32 machines out of an expected 56 took part. Mud and rain, with the pressure of traffic and spectators, “disorganized the procession,” but this is pronounced a better test of running qualities than favorable conditions would have furnished. Various tricycles, the French carriage which won the Paris-Marseilles race, landaus, dogcarts, bath chairs, delivery vans, etc., all presumably motor-driven, participated. No winner is reported or any time given.