Ten decades before driving a Prius became a status symbol, a Colorado electrical engineer designed an electric car capable of going 100 miles before its battery needed a recharge.
Oliver Parker Fritchle, a chemist-turned-engineer, created one of the first gas and electric hybrid automobiles in the U.S.
From 1904 to 1917, his Denver-based Fritchle Auto & Battery Co. produced the vehicle known as the 100-mile electric car.
His design, which substituted laminated ash for the heavy iron frames used in conventional autos, employed his own axles, motors, steering mechanisms, speed-control units and car bodies, as well as his own 28-cell lead batteries. Each battery weighed from 400 to 800 pounds, and ran an 8-horsepower engine.
In 1908, Fritchle challenged other electric automobile manufacturers to race from Lincoln, Neb., to New York City, a distance that eclipsed every other trip attempted by electrical cars.
Nobody accepted the dare. He decided to go anyway, and left Lincoln on Oct. 31, 1908, in a two-seater Fritchle. When the battery wore down, he took his 2,100-pound car to electrical plants and private garages, paying $1 an hour to juice up the battery.
He ended up in Times Square on Nov. 28, then drove to Washington, D.C., for a victory lap in the Capitol’s circular driveway. But Oliver Fritchle’s hopes to build an East Coast factory went unrealized. He returned to Denver via train.
Fritchle later experimented with gas-electric hybrid vehicles, but they never caught on among consumers, who gravitated toward Fords and other gasoline cars that cost far less.
Today, a restored 1915 Fritchle, on loan from a private collector, is on display at the Colorado Historical Society, 1300 Broadway. The society hopes to raise enough money to buy the Fritchle for its permanent collection.
