Baker Motor Vehicle

Baker Electric (Cleveland, from 1899) Cleveland's Baker company proved electric cars could be a respectable product rather than a curiosity. Thomas Edison bought one as his first car, and Baker Electrics were driven by two First Ladies, Helen Taft and later Edith Wilson. The appeal was what early gasoline cars lacked: no hand crank, no gear changes, and none of their vibration, smell or noise. Baker's era also holds the lesson the industry kept relearning. Once Charles Kettering's electric starter arrived in 1912 and Henry Ford's mass production cut gasoline car prices, refinement alone could not hold buyers.