100 years ago, Shimla had plans to become an electric car city

The British wanted to rid Shimla of its rickshaws and coolies. But instead of bringing in petrol cars and buses, they wanted to put small electric cars on their summer capital’s roads

Motors are clean and powerful, batteries are getting cheaper, lighter and more capacious by the day. Someday soon, we all will be driving electric cars. That was the hope 100 years ago also, when the British authorities were very keen to introduce electric cars in their summer capital Shimla.

From about 1879, Shimla had moved on rickshaws. The hill rickshaw was a chair on two wheels propelled by four ‘jhampanis’ or rickshaw bearers — two in front and two behind.

Kipling spun The Phantom Rickshaw, a ghost story set in Shimla, around them: “Even as she spoke, her horse, swerving from a laden mule, threw himself directly in front of the advancing rickshaw. I had scarcely time to utter a word of warning when, to my unutterable horror, horse and rider passed through men and carriage as if they had been thin air.” Mulk Raj Anand built his novel Coolie around the life of a Shimla jhampani.

The general public, including Whites, were allowed no carriage fancier than a rickshaw. As Legislative Assembly member T V Seshagiri Ayyar told the House on March 14, 1921: “There are no good roads in Simla and conveyances except rickshaws; and it is only Jupiter (the viceroy) who is allowed the use of motorcars and that all minor gods have to walk the earth as other mortals do.”

By 1910, when Shimla’s population was 40,000, the 20-odd miles of road in the city were beginning to choke with rickshaws. More offensive than the rickshaws to the British was the horde of ‘coolies’ that drove them, and the authorities were looking for an alternative.

Buses and cars ran in the plains but they were ruled out. “I did not mention petrol driven cars or buses in my introductory remarks as it is unlikely that they would ever be introduced in Simla,” wrote J W Meares, electrical adviser to Government of India, in a feasibility report he signed off on August 26, 1914. How wrong he was, unfortunately.

Simla Improvement Committee’s report of 1914 said, “One is justified in assuming that the introduction of small motors, electrically driven, would tend to diminish the hordes of rickshaw coolies infesting Simla.”

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Chief engineer of the public works department in Punjab, Ducane Smythe, was the first to propose introducing electric cars in Shimla, at a meeting of the Simla Improvement Committee, in 1907. “At that time battery cars were impracticable; they are no longer so,” wrote Meares in his report of 1914.

A year later, the journal Indian Engineering wrote: “There is no reason why small electric vehicles should not displace the rickshaw in hill stations, where these are in general use. Electric vehicles are now on the market that will take most of the gradients found in and about Simla.”

We hear of ‘regenerative braking’ in connection with Metro trains and Tesla cars these days but it was being talked about all those years ago: “The conditions on a hill station are ideal for regenerative control and advantage would naturally be taken of this fact; also the electric braking properties of the motor greatly facilitate matters for hill station use.”

The electric car’s rise in Simla seemed imminent. The American journal Electric Vehicles wrote in its January 1917 issue: “In view of the attention now being given to the development of the electric automobile in this country, it is interesting to note that the matter is also exciting interest in Simla. The postal department is to be approached with a view to the trial of such vehicles for the conveyance of mail, and at a recent meeting of the municipality the committee instructed the electrical engineer to submit specifications for an ‘electrical jinrickshaw’.”

Meares, who had considered and ruled out running trams from “Chhota Simla Post Office to the guard house below Viceregal Lodge” because of high costs, was optimistic about electric cars. “That small 2-seated cars would be successful I have no doubt,” he wrote. The popularity of electrics in America, the performance of Edison’s new nickel-iron-potash cell and the fact that cars would be charged overnight — in the cheaper ‘light load’ hours — were all positives.

Meares expected a small electric car to cost around Rs 1,200, and run 50–70 miles (80–112 km) on a single charge that would not cost more than Rs 3. Captain B C Battye, who had supervised the construction of Shimla’s first hydel plant at Chaba — commissioned in 1913 — even made a blueprint for a small hill car down to the sound of its hooter. “All the cars in Simla should be fitted with standard electrical horns tuned to a musical note or preferably to one of three musical notes forming the common chord of one scale… to prevent a vast amount of noise and nuisance on the roads.”

Battye’s proposed car would have been 10.5 feet long and 5 feet wide, a little more than the 9’x4’ dimensions of a hill rickshaw given by Anand in Coolie. His model for the Shimla light electric car was ‘Niagara Adler Carette’, a car I have not been able to find on the internet. Adler was a German carmaker and many other companies, including Morgan, built their coachwork on its Kleinwagen chassis. Niagara was probably one such coachbuilder. ‘Carette’ simply denotes a small car.

With a 10 horsepower motor, the car would have carried “two people and a third on the dicky seat” and climbed “any hill in Simla over which the wheels could obtain a grip.” Battye wanted a detachable battery to reduce downtime. “The battery would be located behind the body and under the dicky seat, with special charging terminals, and in a place from which it can be readily removed and replaced or else charged in situ.”

He expected the car would be a commercial success. “My idea is that this same car would be used by the owners as much in Delhi and Lahore as in Simla… Owners would bring their car up to Simla in the spring and take it back with them to Delhi, etc, in the autumn… There is no doubt whatever in my opinion that in a few years’ time, electrically propelled vehicles will entirely replace petrol vehicles for city use… Simla presents peculiarly suitable conditions for the successful adoption of such vehicles.”

World War 1 had started when Battye signed off on his note in Bombay (now Mumbai), on October 23, 1914. By the time it ended, messy petrol vehicles had become more viable than electrics with the lessons learnt on battlefields. Simla’s electric car wish was stillborn.

Here’s a Reuters report dated October 20, 1920:

Simla, Wednesday: The retiring Viceroy and Lady Chelmsford said farewell to Simla this morning. Their departure was attended by public and Crown officials, and military officials in full dress. The 59th Punjabs and the Boy Scouts furnished the Guard of Honour. The motor-car finally moved away, the band playing the National Anthem.

Petrol had won.