Electric almost 50 years ago
10/21/2015
The electric car is on the advance in 2015, although this was also claimed around 50 years ago and, as we know, there was already a wave of electric cars at the beginning of the 20th century. But let's stay with the year 1967, as Automobil Revue reported in its comments on the Turin Motor Show:
"Giannini (Rome) and Moretti (Turin) have now also dedicated themselves to the electric car, basing their vehicles on the Fiat 500. The engine power here is 3 hp and the batteries have a capacity of 160 Ah at 48 volts or 250 Ah at 72 volts. The batteries are housed in the trunk and sometimes also in the interior. The top speed of these vehicles is between 50 and 55 km/h and the operating radius is around 100 km."
From the outside, you could hardly tell that the small car - originally equipped with a radiator grille at the front - was electric, and it certainly did a respectable job in city traffic. But above all, the design could perhaps motivate Sergio Marchionne to give the modern Fiat 500 an electric motor, as he already sells many other versions of this small car.
It must be said, however, that the Moretti and Giannini designs of the 1960s were not a great success, nor were the De Tomaso (Ghia) Rowan and other one-offs of the time. The battery technology was probably still too heavy and too powerless for that ...
