When Electric Cars Were for Women

At the start of the 20th century, electric cars competed with steam and gasoline vehicles in a fast-growing but unsettled automobile market. Their makers emphasized practical advantages: unlike gasoline cars, which required a difficult hand-crank start before electric starters arrived in 1911, electric cars could be switched on quietly and produced no exhaust. Companies marketed these qualities especially to women, reflecting contemporary assumptions about who would value ease and cleanliness; doctors were another target, since quiet cars suited nighttime house calls. General Electric’s charger advertisements featured women plugging in their vehicles, while early adopters such as Fannie Goodnow used electric cars at home.

Goodnow’s 1908 Bailey Victoria Phaeton illustrates both the promise and the limits of the technology. Its mercury-arc rectifier converted household AC power to the DC needed by its battery, but charging a depleted battery took about 12 hours. The standard lead-acid battery offered roughly 64 to 80 kilometers of range, and the car cost about $2,000 - around $73,000 today. Bailey, a former carriage maker, entered the electric-vehicle business as automobiles displaced carriages, but its first models relied on Thomas Edison’s alkaline battery, which leaked and failed to hold a charge. Bailey switched to Gould batteries, then adopted Edison’s improved design and promoted it with a long-distance tour. Yet improved batteries could not prevent gasoline cars from gaining the upper hand: Henry Ford’s Model T helped establish the internal-combustion engine as the dominant choice.