It’s well known that Henry Ford and Thomas Edison were business and personal BFFs. Early in his career Ford worked for Edison and Edison was instrumental in Ford taking the plunge to invent carmaking as we know it today.
What’s not so well known is that there was nearly an Edison-Ford electric vehicle (EV). By the time Ford was founded in 1903, Edison was already working on batteries to replace combustion engines in cars.
In 1914, Henry Ford (below) went public with his plans to make an EV in collaboration with Edison. In the January 11 edition of The New York Times, Ford was quoted as saying: “Within a year, I hope, we shall begin the manufacture of an electric automobile. I don't like to talk about things which are a year ahead, but I am willing to tell you something of my plans.
“The fact is that Mr Edison and I have been working for some years on an electric automobile which would be cheap and practicable. Cars have been built for experimental purposes, and we are satisfied now that the way is clear to success. The problem so far has been to build a storage battery of light weight which would operate for long distances without recharging. Mr Edison has been experimenting with such a battery for some time.”
Spoiler alert: it never really happened, although prototypes were indeed built. Photographs exist of one early tiller-steered model and a later version using a Model T frame, steering and suspension.
Theories abound about why the Edison-Ford EV never went into production. But in Friends, Families and Forays: Scenes From the Life and Times of Henry Ford, family historian Ford Richardson Bryan wrote that Henry’s insistence on using only Edison batteries essentially killed the project, because the nickel-iron packs simply weren’t suitable for powering a vehicle, and he wouldn’t consider any other technology.
Although Ford purchased nearly 100,000 of them before figuring that out.