THE FABULOUS STUDEBAKER BOYS
Electric-car companies have been short-circuiting for more than a century. Some 50 years after their company was founded, three of the Studebaker brothers—Henry, Clem and John—steered their family’s prosperous wagonmaking business toward automobiles. In 1902, Studebaker released its first battery-operated vehicle and would eventually add several more models, including a line of commercial trucks. But the cars were expensive—around $30,000 in today’s dollars, or nearly 15% more than a Ford Model T—and slow, maxing out around 20 mph, a third of what a gas-powered car could do. The batteries alone weighed 970 pounds. After producing just 1,841 vehicles in 12 years, Studebaker ended its electric line in 1912 to focus on gas vehicles.
The irony was not lost on Elon Musk, who in 2018 visited the Studebaker museum in South Bend, Indiana, and tweeted out John Studebaker’s dictum about gas cars: “Clumsy, dangerous, noisy brutes, which stink to high heaven.”