Shadowy figure: Ernest Lehwess, seated behind the driver, was quite the schemer Courtesy Mick Hamer

IN THE first decade of the 20th century, transport reached a tipping point. Would the future belong to petrol, electricity or even steam? The stage was set for a decisive showdown when the world’s first practical electric buses hit the streets of London in July 1907. They were clean, quiet, reliable and fume-free, unlike their petrol-powered counterparts, which were widely reviled for their deafening din and evil smells.

Electrobuses, as they were called, were an immediate hit with the capital’s commuters, and the prospect of a successful challenge to the internal combustion engine was greeted with delight by press and public alike. “The doom of the petrol-driven omnibus is at hand,” forecast the Daily News. “The electrobus is probably a more formidable rival than the petrol omnibus, not only to the horse omnibus but also to the tramway,” concluded Douglas Fox, the country’s foremost engineer and designer of many of the world’s railways, at the September 1908 meeting of what’s now the British Science Association.

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The future of electric vehicles seemed assured. The bus, with its fixed routes and hence predictable demands on batteries, seemed a very promising application. If battery power proved its worth here, then other uses would surely take off. And London, the world’s largest city and centre of the British Empire, had a track record of setting global trends in technology, so there would be ripples around the world. Yet, in little more than two years, …