ELECTRIC ACTION

Others may have already done so, but I’ll weigh in with Indian’s electric start model in 1914, however I’m not sure that it entered full production. It certainly seems to have been built and tested, but battery technology may not to have been up to the job, aggravated, one supposes, by the grim American roads of the period giving everything a good shaking.

Surely that was the first attempt; General Motors are acknowledged among motoring historians to have been the first with electric starting on a production car, the 1912 Cadillac. This system was designed by one Charles Kettering who founded the Delco company, still extant and a division of GM to this day so far as I know.

We’re going to give the (entirely imaginary) award to Nigel on this one because Indian did indeed build around 200 electric start motorcycles in 1914. The world’s first electric-start four-wheeler was a Cadillac, and its starter/generator was manufactured next door to the Indian factory. So it seemed logical to Oliver Hendee to fit a selfstarter to the Indian two-wheelers – although in practice they suffered horribly from the bike’s vibration and battery technology was barely up to the demands of reliable electric starting. Most of them were recalled to be fitted with kick starts and magnetos and to have the weighty starter motors removed. The one seen here was built at the Indian plant in Canada, and auctioned by Bonhams a couple of years ago. Rowena