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Originally billed as "The Ultimate Achievement of Advanced Electrical Engineering and Compact Automotive Design," you could call the Henney Kilowatt a true forefather of today's hybrid and electric cars. The whole story of how this car came to be is available here at the Wiki, but the short version is that the Eureka Williams Company (think vacuum cleaners), Henney Coachworks and National Union Electric Company (original makers of Exide batteries) all got together with tooling bought from Renault to create a fully electric sedan to compete with gasoline-powered cars of the same era (the 1950s). Unfortunately, the machine was held back by the same problems that electric car companies face today: price, speed and range. At first, the 36 volt power system was woefully inadequate, but for 1960, a new 72 volt system allowed the car to reach 60 miles per hour for about 60 miles. Still, this was too little, too late for the Kilowatt and less than 50 were ever sold.
The low production numbers of the Henney Kilowatt make this eBay auction quite unusual. The future owner of this car is extremely unlikely to ever see another example of his car on the road. As this is written, the high bid was $5,215, but the reserve had not yet been reached. If you are interested in owning a very cool and interesting piece of alternative-automotive history, be sure to watch this auction intently.
[Source: eBay, Wikipedia]
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