A brief history of electric mobility

Around 1900 it was still completely open which drive would prevail in vehicles on the road. In the US, about a third of them drove with steam, petrol and electric power. The first petrol cars were anything but reliable, expensive to run and difficult to start.

The electric car, on the other hand, was ready to drive as soon as the main switch was turned on while the battery was full. In 1899 it was the electric car designed by the Belgian engineer and racing driver Camille Jenatzy (1868-1913). «La Jamaica Contente»the first road vehicle to exceed 100 km/h.

The railway was one of the first electrified modes of transport. Switzerland has no coal reserves and therefore had to import by far the most important source of energy at the time. In order to strengthen foreign independence and open up a new field of activity for the electricity industry, the electrification of the railways was initiated en masse at an early stage. Trams and smaller trains were the first. The first electrified route in Switzerland was the «Tramway Vevey-Montreux-Chillon» in 1888.

As early as 1906 and 1913, the various sections of the Simplon-Lötschberg axis with the “white coal” were put into operation. The SBB even built their own power stations to electrify their lines, such as the Ritom hydroelectric station in the Ticino canton, which was completed in 1920. Switzerland played a leading role in international comparison as early as the interwar period.

In Switzerland, the beginning of electric vehicle production was strongly associated with the name Johann Albert Tribelhorn (1868-1925). Tribelhorn grew up in an orphanage in St.Gallen and emigrated to Buenos Aires in 1889, where he became head of the mechanical workshop of the Argentine telegraph company. In 1899 he returned to Olten and founded the company a year later «Swiss battery workshop Tribelhorn AG». In 1906 he moved production to the shores of Lake Zurich in Feldbach, in the municipality of Hombrechtikon.

In addition to road vehicles, he designed about 26 electric boats. The customer magazine, for which Tribelhorn wrote most of the articles itself, was called “The Electromobile”. Standard vehicle types were offered, but eventually virtually every car was individually tailored to customer needs. Buses for hotels, ambulances, various commercial vehicles, fire engines and vans were particularly popular. Physicians were at the top of the passenger car customer structure. The advantages are obvious: the hands remain unharmed and clean during the starting process, the vehicles move silently and do not produce any exhaust fumes.

The tourist city of Lucerne probably had the highest density of Tribelhorn vehicles, where all first-class hotels had at least one electric vehicle. In 1912, 24 charging stations were available for electric vehicles, mainly in German-speaking Switzerland. During the First World War, when draft horses were needed for the army, the number of Tribelhorn trucks ordered increased by leaps and bounds. However, an electric wheelchair designed for the veterans’ homes did not provide a breakthrough.

The brilliant business year after the end of the war prompted Tribelhorn to build a new factory in Altstetten. However, there was no success. In 1921, the Tribelhorn company had to file for bankruptcy. The successor “Electric Vehicles AG EFAG” had only five permanent employees, in 1926 Tribelhorn’s son Leon Ricardo took over the management.

In the interwar period, the electric car embodied the antithesis of what was considered progressive. Car clubs were popular, but electric cars embodied little heroism. The combustion engine of petrol and diesel had clearly prevailed; Actual costs were hardly an issue. Electrification was promoted, especially in the domestic sector. Electric cars, on the other hand, were seen as old-fashioned, slow and expensive. Despite this, they remained popular workhorses in various niches. Electric pallet trucks, platform trucks, tractors, small commercial vehicles and vans provided valuable services.

More such companies Swiss Industrial Association Neuhausen (SIG) and the company Oehler in Aarau entered the electric vehicle sector. The EFAG had been in 1937 New electric vehicles AG NEFAG renamed. Owner and director since 1972 was Margrit Weiss-Schaad, with a PhD in mathematics. Although she had to fight against resistance in the male-dominated industry, she managed to stand up for herself and successfully continued the business. In 1980 the company was sold to the Mowag sold in Kreuzlingen, where electric vehicle construction continued.

Not least because of the oil price crises and the publication of the report “The Limits to Growth” by Club of Rome Electric mobility experienced a new boom in the 1970s. The potential of electric vehicles has been Tour of Sol presented to the general public from 1985. The race with the prototypes built by inventors and equipped with solar drives was a well-reported media event. The first Tour of Sol led from Romanshorn via Winterthur to Geneva; the last tour was from Lucerne to Adelboden in 1993. A regular participant was also the technical school in Biel, which took part in the 1996 World Solar Challenge in Australia with the «Ghost of Biel/Bienne III» set the world solar speed record of 161 km/h.

The Tour of Sol made Switzerland the center of professional interest and inspired the construction of electric vehicles. Creative shapes such as the GL-88, the ‘egg’ of the Horlacher AGthe three-wheeled «Twike» van Twike Inc and the four-seater hybrid bike powered by muscle power and an electric motor «ZEM 4cycle» developed. In 2009, the first factory in Europe designed exclusively for e-bikes was built in Huttwil. “kites” is almost the epitome of the Swiss electric bicycle.

In 2010, the first national electromobility forum took place at the Swiss Transport Museum in the presence of Federal Councilor Moritz Leuenberger. With the « Lucerne Charter » about 300 participants from research, politics, business and society signed a letter of intent to pave the way for electromobility in Switzerland. A lot has happened since then: electric cars are no longer exotic, but now stand for progress and modernity, as the petrol engine once did.

But electric cars are not just the yellow of the egg: their increase will consume a lot of electricity – ideally generated from renewable energy sources. The production of the batteries is not without problems; Charging and building the infrastructure across the board takes time. Nevertheless, electromobility will make an important contribution to realizing the energy transition. The potential seems virtually unlimited: in 2015/16, Bertrand Piccard and André Borschberg managed to fly a solar plane «Solar impulse» the world tour. Almost all robotic missions to Mars also continued maximum-Electric drives from Sachseln/Obwalden over the red planet.