eBay find of the day: 1960 Henney Kilowatt electric car
Click on the image above for more pictures
Originally billed as "The Ultimate Achievement of Advanced Electrical Engineering and Compact Automotive Design," you could call the Henney Kilowatt a true forefather of today's hybrid and electric cars. The whole story of how this car came to be is available here at the Wiki, but the short version is that the Eureka Williams Company (think vacuum cleaners), Henney Coachworks and National Union Electric Company (original makers of Exide batteries) all got together with tooling bought from Renault to create a fully electric sedan to compete with gasoline-powered cars of the same era (the 1950s). Unfortunately, the machine was held back by the same problems that electric car companies face today: price, speed and range. At first, the 36 volt power system was woefully inadequate, but for 1960, a new 72 volt system allowed the car to reach 60 miles per hour for about 60 miles. Still, this was too little, too late for the Kilowatt and less than 50 were ever sold.
The low production numbers of the Henney Kilowatt make this eBay auction quite unusual. The future owner of this car is extremely unlikely to ever see another example of his car on the road. As this is written, the high bid was $5,215, but the reserve had not yet been reached. If you are interested in owning a very cool and interesting piece of alternative-automotive history, be sure to watch this auction intently.
Gallery: Henney Kilowatt
[Source: eBay, Wikipedia]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
A.Brien 11:16AM (2/25/2008)
Good car for the week-ends. It's cheap too at 5600$. It's maybe a good investment.
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Phil L. 1:39PM (2/25/2008)
This idea has surfaced more than once.
Recall that the ZENN is made by Feel Good Cars, which got its EV start by selling a "new" "old" EV: You guessed it, a retrofit Renault Dauphine.
A little info here:
http://ffaat.pointclark.net/blog/archives/48-A-New-Old-Kind-of-Car..html
They had some good ideas: By registering it under the original OEM name and year of manufacture - but rebuild the entire vehicle as an EV - they could avoid the expenses associated with new car standards (airbags, ABS, etc.), but offer a new EV experience. I don't believe they sold very many before moving on to the ideas associated with the current ZENN lineup.
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L.WOOD 12:05PM (2/26/2008)
Hennesey used to work on electric cars? I thought he specialized in modifying Dodge Vipers? This isn't Hennesey? It's Henney? Never mind then........
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davewin 2:45PM (3/06/2008)
Does it not strike anyone as odd that this 50 year old car can supposedly go 60 miles on one charge but today's fancy electrics can't easily do that?
Sure there are a lot more safety and performance demands today, but this seems to indicate things haven't really moved forward much.
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Chris M 3:50PM (3/06/2008)
Davewin: There have been several modern electric cars that could go more than double that 60 miles per charge, including the RAV4 EV, EV1, Venturi Fetish, and Tesla Roadster. Some, like the T-Zero, were prototypes or homebuilt, not mass produced thus not well known.
You are thinking of the low power low speed "Neighborhood Electric Vehicles", which are limited in both speed and distance.
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thanuka 1:39PM (3/10/2008)
Another good choice for an ebay alternative is elfingo.com http://www.elfingo.com
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Nishantha 2:10AM (8/12/2008)
This looks interesting and important. But the car is not old as it seems.
..........
Nishantha
http://www.esteembpo.com/
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mrgreg 7:02AM (7/06/2009)
Good article. Check out http://us.ebid.net/perl/auction.cgi?auction=17209904&mo=auction
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