Nikola Tesla electric car hoax

Originally from Wikipedia · Est. Feb 2006

The Nikola Tesla electric car hoax refers to more than one anecdote of a supposed invention of Nikola Tesla.

Description

One version of this anecdote is described by Heinrich Jebens. It was suggested to Heinrich to contact Nikola Tesla to inquire about Tesla's electric car. This suggestion was offered to Heinrich by Peter Savo while both were onboard a transatlantic voyage to America from Germany. In their conversation, Peter referred to Tesla - not by name, but - as his "uncle" causing many to doubt the credibility of this story since Tesla had no nephews.

In all other versions of this anecdote, Peter Savo is claimed to be its author - not Heinrich Jebens.

According to the Peter Savo version, in 1931, Tesla modified a Pierce-Arrow car in Buffalo, New York by removing the gasoline engine and replacing it with a brushless AC electric motor. The motor was purportedly powered by a "cosmic energy power receiver" contained in a box measuring 25 inches by 10 inches by 6 inches, which contained 12 radio vacuum tubes and was connected to a 6-foot-long antenna. The car was claimed to have been driven for about 50 miles at speeds of up to 90 mph over an eight-day period.

The story has been subject to debate due to the lack of physical evidence to confirm both the existence of the car and the fact that Tesla did not have a nephew named Peter Savo. Tesla's grand-nephew, William Terbo, has also dismissed the Tesla electric car story as a fabrication.

A number of web pages exist that perpetuate the Peter Savo version of this anecdote. The continuous recycling of reactive power is a method by which the car could have been powered, though there is a lack of verifiable evidence contemporaneous to the story. If the car was powered (for the most part) by the reuse of reactive power, a thorough review of these anecdotes would be required to determine if an extremely high quality factor is responsible for significantly offsetting power losses.

With the exception of these points, most versions of this anecdote are based solely on the Peter Savo story with additional embellishments added by subsequent retellings.

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