How The Electric Bus Was Killed Off 100 Years Ago

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The electric bus and other vehicles could have been running in the UK over a century ago, if fraudsters had not stifled clean transport at birth, writes Kieran Cooke at Climate News Network.

The electric bus would have let Londoners enjoy clean air early in the twentieth century, saving millions of people from breathing problems and premature death, but for the dishonesty and double-dealing which promoted the internal combustion engineย instead.

The world is only now slowly waking up to the scale of the problem. Air pollution caused by fumes from the hundreds of thousands of vehicles on our roads is one of the big killers of the modern age, especially in cities, and is, along with climate change, a serious threat to the future of theย planet.

It is not justย fast-growing cities like Beijingย orย Delhiย that are reeling from the effects of vehicleย pollution.

At leastย 40,000 deathsย in London each year are attributed to outdoor air pollution, much of it the result of the noxious fumes emitted from internal combustion engine-driven cars, trucks and buses, particularly those fuelled byย diesel.

Yet, as investigative journalist Mick Hamer writes in his excellent new bookย A Most Deliberate Swindle, much of this pollution could have beenย avoided.

More than a century ago the technology existed for electric vehicles โ€“ hailed today as one of the main ways to tackle the urban pollution crisis. The adoption of a revolutionary vehicle called the electrobus could have ushered in an age of clean transport โ€“ and cleanย air.

Hamer tells the story of how a massive fraud of shareholders and various other scurrilous activities acted as a severe brake on the development of electricย transport.

โ€œOne thing is pretty certainโ€, writes Hamer. โ€œThe electric vehicle wouldnโ€™t have been stuck in the doldrums for a century, and todayโ€™s electric revival wouldnโ€™t have had to start fromย zero.

Petrolโ€™sย Moment

โ€œOur cities could have been a whole lot cleaner, healthier and quieter. The electrobus swindle didnโ€™t just impoverish the shareholders of Edwardian England. We were allย robbed.โ€

Turn the clock back to 1906, when the age of horse-drawn public transport is gradually coming to an end in the United Kingdom. A number of petrol-fuelled buses are on Londonโ€™s streets. They are noisy and smelly โ€“ some of them catch fire. They are prone toย breakdown.

The electrobus โ€“ powered by batteries โ€“ is noiseless, emits no fumes and is more reliable. Its backers say itโ€™s also cheaper to run than petrolย vehicles.

This was the age of the entrepreneurial investor, a time when members of the public were caught up in a rush to become shareholders in all manner of get-rich-quick schemes โ€“ from gold mines in the Amazon to rubber plantations inย Malaya.

Shares inย Demand

The public fell over itself to buy shares in theย London Electrobus Companyย and what was considered to be โ€œthe aristocrat among publicย conveyances.โ€

The problem was that while the basic idea of the bus was sound, the people behind it were not.ย Hamer lists a colourful cast of devious characters โ€“ headed by a German-born lawyer and including the nephew of the Greek prime minister and his astrologer, a music hall artist, a crooked judge, and aย gunrunner.

Shareholders were systematically deceived by โ€œsolicitors and accountants who could not be trusted to add up the pennies in a childโ€™s piggyย bank.โ€

โ€œOn top of the fraud, bribery and blackmail, there was champagne, sex, juicy divorce cases, a drunken brawl and motoring derring-do. This was no longer a simple story about an electricย bus.โ€

Some electrobuses did run on Londonโ€™s streets. Harrods, the fashionable department store, used electric delivery vans tillย 1918.

In 1911 a fleet of 17 electric and hybrid buses was running in Brighton, on Englandโ€™s south coast, but by then the London Electrobus Company โ€“ wracked by court cases and press exposรฉs of its fraudulent goings-on โ€“ had gone intoย liquidation.

Boost forย Oil

Along withย Henry Fordโ€™s model Tย car, internal combustion-powered buses were starting to be mass-produced, and costs dropped. Oil consumption grewย dramatically.

Perhaps the air in our cities โ€“ and our health โ€“ would be a lot better today but for those fraudsters of more than 100 yearsย ago.

โ€œIf battery power worked for buses then other vehicles might have followed suitโ€, saysย Hamer.

โ€œIn the grand scheme of things, the failure of an electric bus may seem trivial, but it led ultimately to the failure of electric deliveryย vehicles.

โ€œThe result was a resounding victory for the internal combustion engine, which in turn established acceptable levels of noise and pollution. We still hear and breathe these consequences today.โ€ โ€“ย Climate Newsย Network

*A Most Deliberate Swindleย by Mick Hamer is published in paperback by RedDoorย ย ย 

This article was originally published on Climate News Network.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons | CC2.5

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