Novel Electric Car

NOVEL ELECTRIC CAR.

Driven by a Storage Battery - To Run on Rails or Common Roads.

H.L. Stillman, treasurer of the American Automobile Wheel company, of New York has been in Bolton, near Worcester, Mass., several days looking for a place to build an electric road, says the New York Tribune. Mr. Stillman went over the road from Stow to Bolton and was much pleased with it. He is planning to build a road in this section. He is looking for a place about ten miles long on which to lay the new Edison and Stillman electric road. The cost of building this road on an ordinary highway is $2,000 a mile. Each car has a storage battery, and no overhead wire is used.

Mr. Stillman is the inventor of the wheels that will be used on the system. Each wheel has two rubber tires and is made so it can run either on a rail or on a common highway. He is also the inventor of the rail that will be used. It is light, six inches wide, and can be used either side up.

Mr. Stillman is enthusiastic over his inventions. He says the greatest efficiency in the Stillman wheel is in its adhesion to steel rails. It is well known that a car drive wheel operating on a steel rail requires a weight of not less than two tons to secure sufficient adhesion to prevent slipping, while in the Stillman wheel an equal adhesion is secured in less than one-half a ton. Electric cars weigh from eight tons upward. Locomotives weigh much more. A car of two tons weight can be made sufficiently large to carry as many passengers as the electric car weighing eight tons by using the new wheel.