FIG. 28. AN ELECTRIC VICTORIA WITH BRITISH STORAGE-BATTERIES
By permission of the Electric Power Storage Co., Ltd., London
ago, “this condition of affairs is gradually disappearing; private electric carriages are now to be seen in London, and their number is increasing. Cars can be obtained capable of running to Brighton, Portsmouth, and other places within seventy or eighty miles of the metropolis.” (i.e. on one charge. They may be called “short-tour cars.”)
Electric town-cars are generally of the landaulette type—for theatre-going, and for paying visits in such inaccessible suburbs as Stoke Newington, Balham, and Hampstead. They carry from two to four passengers, can attain a speed of fourteen miles an hour, and will run forty miles without recharging.
A long-distance electric car, to compete with petrol, has yet to be made, but it will shortly be possible to obtain one of moderate weight at a reasonable price that will cover one hundred and twenty miles on a single charge; and, as a matter of fact, tours of more than a thousand miles (from London to Glasgow and back) have been satisfactorily accomplished.
PUBLIC CONVEYANCES
The perfect motor-omnibus, and, for that matter, the perfect ’bus of any kind, has yet to arise, and is suggestive of Darwinism in the length of time required for its evolution. But can London and the long-suffering traveller wait ten million years or so—putting up meanwhile with the inconvenience of existing vehicles—until the omnibus companies wake up, or are superseded by more enterprising business adventurers?
Why, for instance, should all omnibuses be stuffy? There was a reason for it when their floors were covered with straw and they were shut in with doors. But now there are no doors, and there is nothing to harbour damp; yet even when the passengers sitting at the entrance of the omnibus are assailed by icy blasts, those at the far end are in an atmosphere of mustiness strongly suggestive of stables. Then, on days when the roads are greasy, these vehicles crawl along, often taking an hour and a half to travel from Fulham to Liverpool Street (a distance of about six miles). Upon such minor nuisances and annoyances as the exiguous space (about 2 feet 6 inches) between the seats, ticket-giving and ticket-examining, the jarring of brakes, the rattling of loose coach-bolts, the lurching of the top-heavy structure, the windows that will not open, the glare and dust in summer, the Cimmerian darkness in winter and at night, the stout people who take up too much room, the wet umbrellas and odoriferous waterproof cloaks, the exasperating and often unnecessary stopping every few hundred yards to the distress of the poor animals, it is needless to dilate. We experience them every day of our lives.