What Was The First Battery-Electric Coach In Great Britain?
The future of road transportation is electric, and whilst this has been seen most prominently with bus services, many coach hires are also making the switch to electric power as well, providing even greater levels of luxury and comfort.
Electric vehicles are an inherently attractive prospect to the luxury traveller, because they are quieter, provide a more consistent ride quality due to the lack of a gearbox and give peace of mind due to the inherent green credentials of the technology.
However, the technology that makes electric coaches possible is far older than one may expect. Even though it has taken until the last couple of decades for hybrid-electric and battery-electric coaches and buses to hit the streets, the first attempt emerged over a century ago.
The Rise And Fall of The London Electrobus
One aspect that is astonishing about the motoring world prior to the success of the Ford Model T is that it was not necessarily a foregone conclusion that petrol-powered engines would be the most prominent way cars and coaches would get around for over a century.
In the first decade of the 20th century, there were more electric cars on American streets than petrol ones, and there were serious plans by Thomas Edison to make a prototypical car battery that, had it come to fruition, could have changed the history of transportation forever.
In London, by contrast, the future seemed to have already arrived thanks to the London Electrobus Company, presenting a transportation solution that was a century ahead of its time.
First registered in April 1906, The London Electrobus Company showcased a prototype omnibus that ran using battery power, as opposed to petrol buses or trolleybuses that relied on overhead power lines.
They were much quieter, emitted no fumes compared to their smoky petrol-powered equivalents and were far more reliable. Once they made it onto the road, even with batteries that had a range of just 40 miles, a changeover time of just three minutes still made them a very viable concept.
The initial goal looked exceptionally promising, with the company claiming to have patented unique technology that meant that no other company could run buses like them, and aimed to run 300 electrobuses in less than a year, making them an appealing prospect for investors to get in on the ground floor of.
The problem was that both of these claims were ultimately found out to be lies in court.
The concept was sound, but the actual London Electrobus Company was a scam from the very start that aimed to con investors in the spirit of the Railway Mania scams of the 1840s.
The patent they had claimed was worth £20,000 (worth over £2m adjusted for inflation), but when it was investigated, it turned out that the patent was for a transmission that was completely unnecessary to the running of the company.
It was not helped that newspaper reports connected the company to the infamous Dr Edward Lehnewss, a serial con artist and cosmopolitan fraudster who had recently been convicted of attempting to bribe a police sergeant to “forget” about his false number plates.
The purported manufacturing facility in west London turned out to be a disused set of stables next to a pub.
Within weeks of the company being registered, the news had come out and the thousands of investors who had pledged a total of £305,000 (over £31m adjusted for inflation) suddenly wanted their money back.
This led to a court order stopping them from using the ill-gotten gains of their shares and ultimately led to over a thousand refunds being issued.
Whilst this could and likely should have been the end of the story, the Electrobuses amazingly did actually run a service starting the following year in 1907.
The scope had been cut significantly, reducing the number of buses from 50 to six, a number that only increased to a maximum of 20 by the end of the life of the London Electrobus Company.
It is a testament to the promise of the technology that a fraud of this scale found out almost immediately was not enough to destroy the service, and whilst the electrobuses ran just one route between Victoria Station and Liverpool Street, the public response to them was exceptionally positive.
Rather than choking on smoke and fumes, passengers enjoyed a relatively quiet and relatively clear ride, only ruined by the fumes billowing from other buses.
Whilst the reputation of Dr Lehwess and the court orders established that a lot of London Electrobus was fraudulent, there was also enough enthusiasm from the Doctor of Law for him to attempt to keep the company going.
As a counterpoint to this, many of the companies involved in the production, distribution and development of the buses and components were all linked to him in some way, and there were allegations that these businesses were a network of fronts to syphon money from the London Electrobus Company.
According to some analysts, a third of the money raised by the company ended up in Dr Lehwess’ hands, an amount that was far from sustainable.
The aim was to get back onto the stock market now that the buses had proven to be reliable, functional and desirable, but whilst the share floatation did raise some money, it only increased the number of buses to 20 and the number of routes to two.
As other bus companies lowered their fares, the electrobuses innovated with a roof on the upper deck of the double-decker design, something that would later become standard-issue with larger buses.
By 1909 the company was struggling and asked shareholders to support a reconstruction effort, but by January 1910, the Reorganisation And Control Syndicate took over the service, London Electrobus Company was liquidated and the service abruptly ended.
Eight of the buses ended up being used in Brighton for over six years, highlighting the remarkable longevity of machines that were expected to only last a single year.
The entire affair caused a lot of damage to the reputation of electric public transport for decades, a reputation that has only truly gone away in the 21st century.
