The primary electric-car president? Ike Eisenhower favored them

At the very least a few presidents have been drivers of electrical vehicles, however they don’t seem to be all within the current previous.

Our thirty fourth President, Dwight David “Ike” Eisenhower, might have been one of many first. Lengthy earlier than Ike turned maybe the twentieth century’s most well-known common, Eisenhower drove round in an early electrical automobile that belonged to his in-laws.

John Sheldon and Elvira Doud, Eisenhower’s father- and mother-in-law, owned the automobile—a 1914 Rauch & Lang electrical automobile. It had been marketed as the primary EV in America with a top-mounted worm drive, and might be pushed from the entrance or the again seat. At its prime pace of 13 mph, it might be pushed as much as 100 miles, in keeping with donation materials provided with the automobile in 1953.

Ike met their daughter Mamie in 1915 and requested her to marry him on Valentine’s Day the following 12 months. The 2 courted, then married on July 1, 1916. Ike drove the automobile usually till it was donated to his museum.

The Douds, a well-off couple who raised Mamie in Colorado, purchased the automobile for $4,300 in 1914. That is the equal of greater than $135,000 right this moment—way over, say, a 2024 Mercedes-Benz EQS 580 sedan.

The newly minted Eisenhowers drove the automobile now and again, however purchased their very own used black Pullman roadster earlier than they moved on to Washington, D.C. The automaker, which went out of enterprise in 1917, barely outlived Ike and Mamie’s automobile, which regularly broke down on the army couple. 

The Eisenhowers would drive gas-powered vehicles for the following few many years. Mamie drove all over the place as a newlywed in D.C., down bustling lanes the place streetcars shared the lanes with Mannequin Ts and the like. “After I would typically take Ike to the workplace within the morning,” she’d recall in an oral historical past taken within the 12 months of her loss of life, “you’d run into what we referred to as then an amazing site visitors downside, which is nothing compared to right this moment.”

The succession of vehicles they owned leaned closely towards Chryslers, however solely after they shipped a Mannequin T to Panama for a tour of responsibility in 1922. There was a 1948 Chrysler Crown Imperial, a 1950 mannequin, then a 1952 mannequin. Then, whereas Eisenhower served as President and Mamie as First Girl—from January 1953 to January 1961—the couple drove White Home Motor Pool autos. Most of these autos had been Chryslers, although the President drove Cadillacs and was pushed in a 1950 “Bubbletop” Lincoln in lots of parades.

Throughout his two phrases within the White Home, Eisenhower’s grandchildren additionally drove an electrical automobile—a miniature one which they piloted down the hallways on the White Home’s first ground after tour teams had been gone for the day. 

Once they retired, they bought two Chryslers from the White Home fleet, to go together with the varied farm autos they used on their farm close to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

1914 Rauch-Lang electrical automobile

Eisenhower’s “loss of life knell” for short-range EVs?

Eisenhower’s administrations preceded the trendy electrical automobile by many years, however his presidency had long-trailing results on right this moment’s EV market. In 1954, after proposing the interstate freeway system in his State of the Union tackle, he advocated for a sustained fuel tax for use to construct highways. In 1956 Eisenhower signed the Federal-Support Freeway Act into impact. In postwar America, “large authorities” had develop into a catalyst for a brand new American period of prosperity, and Eisenhower received over lawmakers with a plan to spend the princely sum of $50 billion to kickstart the development of a a lot bigger community of highways throughout the U.S.

Eisenhower christened the trendy Interstate freeway system. Already a half-century or extra within the making—as rural filth roads turned trendy state roads, then highways—Eisenhower’s large public works mission nonetheless might have rung the loss of life knell for short-range EVs. With ribbons of asphalt promising to take Individuals lots of of miles away from dwelling or again to it, and as streetcar programs had been dismantled, fuel stations mushroomed and sure erased the potential for infrastructure conceived round shorter journey distances.

Eisenhower died in 1969, lengthy earlier than his vp, Richard Nixon, signed laws to discovered the Environmental Safety Company (EPA). Mamie died in 1972. It could take till the presidency of George W. Bush earlier than electrical autos turned a better-funded nationwide precedence and on the similar time, a political sizzling button.

Like a lot of historical past, Ike’s legacy towards environment friendly transportation is difficult. At the very least in his day, any President might be adamantly pro-American and an EV driver.

Photographs courtesy the Eisenhower Presidential Library.