Nikola Tesla’s Electric Car
In the 1930′s a wireless electric car was already on it’s way to our growing highways. Inventor and electricity fetish man Nikola Tesla took his Pierce Arrow and turned it into a very electrifying ride. It’s main power conductor was a box of radio tubes contained in the vehicle’s glove compartment. The car’s antenna, which was connected to those tubes at one end, would conduct electrical current from the air around it, powering the electric engine for miles.
Nikola Tesla & His Coil
Aside from it sounding insanely unsafe, JP Morgan and it’s investors, who originally funded a production model of this experiment, backed out. Why? They didn’t want to be responsible for a car which ran for free. There were no meters anywhere to read how much energy your car was sucking up. It took no gas to power any aspect of the car. No free rides for us.
Pierce Arrow Hood Ornament
Tesla’s 1930 Pierce Arrow turned electric automobile had an energy receiver (a gravitational energy converter) built by Tesla himself. The converter’s dimensions were a small 60 x 25 x 15cm. It was installed in front of the dashboard and contained 12 vacuum tubes. An antenna approximately 1.8 meters long came out of the converter. The motor achieved a maximum of 1800 RPM’s. Tesla said it was fairly hot when operating, and therefore a cooling fan was required. The car was tested for a week, reaching speeds of 90 miles per hour. Performance data showed it were at least comparable to an automobile using gasoline. At a stop sign, a passerby remarked that there were no exhaust gasses coming from the tailpipe. Sadly, the vehicle was to remain in a farm outside Niagara Falls, and would never be massed produced. Imagine the type of commutes we would be in store for today if the REAL Tesla Car came to mass-production life.
1930 Pierce Arrow
Thank you for honoring Nikola Tesla as a greatest Serbian-American discoverer.
Today we have Tesla Motors, similar but not the same.
I also would like to thank you for writing such nice article about my fellow countryman Tesla. If we just knew what would happen to current economy and all this with high gas cost, maybe we would pay more attention on the patents what Nikola was doing.
And I am very sure that the cost of today’s electric car would be dramatically different and much more affordable if the above Tesla car ever saw the mass production.
im interested in all inventions. also in the new hho generators
Thank you for this article.
Tell me where are the plans for this car?
In government volts or on the internet?
i can say thank you for the Morgan and others same…but we can, i hope…made same or…when the world be free, or…?
i had todo a report on him so that is why i am here
The photo of the 1930 Pierce Arrow appears to have a Jaguar hood ornament – ???
The lower photo is of a Lincoln,not a Pierce Arrow. The hood ornament on the Lincoln is a Greyhound.
Sorry, the story of Tesla’s Pierce-Arrow is a fantasy that started to make the rounds in the late 1960′s. This fantasy story would have died out, but people keep posting it over and over again on the Internet, all referencing each other. The reason no one references any original Tesla documentation is because there is none. He never did it.
Tesla never built an electric Pierce-Arrow, or any other car even remotely like what is claimed.
Tesla actually did accomplish quite a number of great things; why muck up his legacy with make-believe?
I have been working on this electrical generation problem for the past few years. Those of you who think Tesla was crazy or the story was fiction, just wait. I have a new generation of power supplies WORKING that produce FREE electrical power using some of the work done by Tesla. A model to be used in today’s cars, getting unlimited MPG, is months away.
Tesla,one of the greatest inventors ever,is finally reckoned.
Even if it was fiction, what can be wrong in finding out what his clue was,there are several patents that are nowadays taken up again, all over the world.Imagine free energy for everyone.
” You must be the change you want to see in the world”
Mohandas Gandhi
Greetings from Germany
Unfortunatly I dont believe it. Nicola tesla was a bright man but not that bright. His ray weapon mighthave exsisted how ever I dont believe that the car could draw the power to move it’s self. I believe that this story has been passed around the intenet and got bigger each time some one told the story. Look up the diffrent stories and you will see what i mean. pay attention to the number of vacume tubes and what not
Joe,
Learn to spell and read a little history. If you think that Nikola Tesla was “not that bright”. You might want to say a word of thanks to him every time you turn on a light in your house, turn on a TV or electrical appliance that runs on Alternating Current.
I agree with Tubular Swells. Tesla was very bright, the fact of the matter is, we have no proof. Cause Tesla usually(If not ever) did not write anything down. He saw the object in his head and how it was made. To him that was a fair reason to believe it would work. So for all we know he could of built that vehicle. And like it said up their:
“They didn’t want to be responsible for a car which ran for free.”
“No free rides for us.”
This is not 1930 Pierce Arrow! It is Lincoln.
I totally agree that the car shown in the photo and said to be Tesla’s 1930 Pierce Arrow is not the car it claims to be. The hood ornament is wrong, the badge on the radiator is wrong (blue ford oval), and the headlights and bumper are wrong.
It is too bad that the loonies out there do not do adequate research for their articles when trying to prove their point. Stupid errors simply help to discredit their claims.
Shame, Shame, and more Shame for being lazy and inacurate.
And – I am not even an antique care expert. Just visually aware!
I heard the story of this car a few years ago, I remain sceptical but hopeful! That Nikola Tesla was a genius is not in dispute, whether this car existed or could do what it is suggested it could do, who knows???
Jul 13th, 2011 at 5:55 pm
[...] original article (pdf) | More: Nikola Tesla’s Electric Car | Henry Ford’s electric [...]