Bob Beaumont, 1932–2011

The creator of an electric car in the 1970s

Bob Beaumont was filling up at a gas station in the late 1960s when he had a brainstorm. “I thought, there’s got to be a better way than to pump this stuff out of the ground” only to have it pollute the air, he later said. He soon sold his Kingston, N.Y., Chrysler dealership and moved to Florida, where he developed the first mass-produced electric car of the internal-combustion era. For several years in the mid-1970s, his company, Sebring-Vanguard, was the sixth-largest car manufacturer in the U.S.

Beaumont was born in Teaneck, N.J., served in the Air Force, and briefly studied business. His electric car, inspired by the lowly golf cart and the Apollo Lunar Roving Vehicle, appeared on the market “just as the Arab oil embargo was ending in 1974,” said The New York Times. The CitiCar was about 8 feet long and “shaped like a cheese wedge.” In its final form, Beaumont’s creation had a 4.4-kilowatt engine, a top speed of about 50 mph, and a range of some 40 miles.

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