The state of electric vehicle technology wasn’t much to crow about in 1967, but Ford made the most of what was available with a clever and forward-looking design called the Comuta.

If you don’t think electric vehicles have come a long way in a short time, just go back a few years and examine the state of the art.

In the spring 1967, the people at Ford of Great Britain cast an eye to the already formidable problems of urban congestion and pollution and developed the Comuta, an experimental electric car for the city.  While the existing technology was meager—lead acid batteries, simple DC motors, no microprocessor controls—Ford made the best of the available hardware with a clever and, dare we say it, elegant design.

Developed at Ford’s brand new Dunton Technical Centre just east of London, the Comuta was built on a steel backbone chassis, above, with all-independent suspension furnished by leading arms at the front and trailing arms at the rear. Note the tiny drum brakes all around. A pair of simple DC motors of five horsepower each drive the rear wheels, and a ductwork system piped through the central backbone provided motor cooling and heating for the passenger compartment.

The cutaway drawing shows how the complete package came together, including the four 12-volt, 85-ampere hour lead-acid batteries that stowed under the seat. The body, tall and stubby with a faint resemblance to the Ford Escort Mark I, was molded in fiberglass. The cozy cabin could accommodate two adults in the front, with room at the rear for two small children or shopping bags. As we can see, the Ford engineers put some genuine thought into the Comuta. Most electric vehicles of this era were crudely converted gasoline cars or gussied-up golf carts.

With an overall length of just 80 inches, the Comuta made a tiny footprint on the pavement—Two could fit in the parking space of a single Ford Cortina. Overall weight was 1,200 lbs, and on a full charge, the Comuta could travel 60 kilometers (37 miles) at 25 mph, while the top speed was 40 mph. As the Ford engineering literature noted, batteries were the critical bottleneck in electric vehicle development at the time. Lithium-ion battery packs like we have today were but a distant dream. Somewhere between two and six Comuta prototypes were built (accounts differ) and at least one still exists: You can see it at the Science Museum in London.