Dodge and others used 12V from 1914 till 1926 when they changed to 6V. The WWII Willys MB military jeep was 24V. It had two 12V batteries in series. So, yes, 12V batteries were definitely used and mass-produced during and well before the 40's. I would guess many large trucks and diesels were using 12v and 24V starting throughout the 30's.
After the mainstream switch to 12V most ignition systems still dropped the voltage to 6V. So even most 80's cars are driving on 6V. 12V is only for lights and Starter. I work on lots of 30's-40's rigs and 12V is no better than 6V in terms of cranking speed or duration. A new battery does wonders. Cheers, Marcus On Sat, Mar 16, 2013 at 10:39 AM, brucedp5 <[email protected]> wrote: > [ref > > electric-vehicle-discussion-list.413529.n4.nabble.com/EVLN-Rare-1940s-Brequet-electric-car-discovered-in-French-garage-tp4661882.html > EVLN Rare 1940s Brequet electric car discovered in French garage > ] > > Question: Were there 12V batteries in the 1940's. I know that in the U.S > Automakers started changing over from 6V PbSO4 Automotive batteries to 12V > in the late 1950's. > > In the piece: > 'The Breguet electric car was produced by French aviation manufacturer, > Louis The Brequet electric car in the garage Charles Breguet. During the > war, Breguet was forced to stop producing aircraft and as a way to keep his > workforce employed he switched to building cars. As petrol at this time was > strictly rationed Louis manufactured electric cars and the Berguet became > the everyday people’s car.' > > A several months back, I posted about a WWII vintage EV that the NAZI's > forced the locals to make because of their fuel shortage. The locals used > delay tactics to keep their EV from being of use to their invaders. But a > 1940 French EV would be before WWII Germany invaded France, so that would > not be the case. > > The piece makes no mention of what battery chemistry, so I will assume > PbSO4 > was used. It did mention a change over in plant manufacturing, so could it > be these were French 12V aircraft batteries? > > Anyone know? > > > {brucedp.150m.com} > ... > http://www.scaruffi.com/politics/wwii.html > > > > -- > View this message in context: > http://electric-vehicle-discussion-list.413529.n4.nabble.com/12V-PbSO4-batteries-in-1940-Rare-1940s-Brequet-electric-car-discovered-tp4661889.html > Sent from the Electric Vehicle Discussion List mailing list archive at > Nabble.com. > _______________________________________________ > UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub > http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org > For EV drag racing discussion, please use NEDRA ( > http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA) > > -- Marcus Reddish *North Valley Systems LLC* Stevensville, Montana 406-360-8628 northvalleyev.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://lists.evdl.org/private.cgi/ev-evdl.org/attachments/20130316/791e83a5/attachment.htm> _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org For EV drag racing discussion, please use NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
