Autelec

From 1940, under the German occupation, petrol in France was rationed almost to nothing. Parisians took to bicycles, to gazogène conversions that ran on wood gas, and to battery power: the electric car, long forgotten, came back, and small workshops turned car maker overnight.source 1source 2 The Autélec was one of these electric microcars of the war, built not for people but for goods.

Its maker was the Société des Freins Jourdain-Monneret, a brake firm at 30 rue Claude-Decaen in the 12th arrondissement. Before the war, it seems, the firm had also built electric platform trucks for moving goods in the railway stations and inside the markets of Paris.source 2 In 1940 it presented the Autélec, a light van for the city’s tradesmen. It was meant to be small and light, easy to load and easy to get at the battery, and it carried 500 kg (1,100 lb). A motor of 3.5 hp (about 2.6 kW) ran from a 48 V lead-acid battery, with three steps of speed forward and three in reverse, for about 25 km/h (16 mph) and a range of about 65 km (40 miles).source 2

The limits were plain. A full recharge took 12 hours, so the van could do one day’s round and no more, and its price of 46,300 francs l’Automobile Ancienne calls prohibitive. It still sold modestly, because it had no competition. A larger electric lorry, for a payload of 1.5 tonnes, was developed too; whether it was ever sold is not known. Production ended in 1943, why is not recorded, and the number made is unknown.source 2 What became of Freins Jourdain-Monneret afterwards has not been found.

Car or van?

The first microcarfan.com said in two sentences that the firm offered several voiturettes, small cars, until 1943.source 3 The only source that describes a body, l’Automobile Ancienne, describes a small utility van, a micro camion.source 2 Until a period photograph or a brochure shows a passenger body, the Autélec is best taken as a van.

The photographs here show not an Autélec but its Paris contemporary, the Pierre Faure, an electric two-seater of the same years.

Everything known about the Brodeau is in two sentences on the old microcarfan.com: a French firm that, during the Second World War, offered a small electric vehicle, and a car of the name photographed in the streets of Paris in 1943. Its author asked readers for more, so even its author knew little else.source 4 That is one collector’s account, and nothing has been found to support it. German Wikipedia, which lists most of the small French makers, has no Brodeau, and the name leads there only to a poet of the 16th century; the Roger-Viollet agency’s captions for its photographs of wartime electric cars in Paris do not mention it either.source 5source 6 The name may be a misreading of a badge, or of an owner’s or a coachbuilder’s name. No maker, address or specification has been traced, nor any production figure or survivor.

Pierre Faure’s firm in Paris began building cars in 1941, and built only electric ones, because there was no petrol.source 7 Faure had worked for Breguet, the aircraft firm whose works also made the Breguet electric car during the war, and his cars had wooden bodies.source 1 There were two: a small two-seat coupé and a delivery van, both with a narrow rear track, which could cover 69–80 km (43–50 miles) between charges at up to 40–45 km/h (25–28 mph).source 7 The firm showed them at the Paris Salon of 1946 and stopped in 1947, when petrol cars came back.source 7

At least one survives. A 1941 Pierre Faure Type PFA two-seater, needing restoration, was offered at a French auction without reserve.source 8 German Wikipedia records a sale in 2016 at €21,900, perhaps of the same car.source 7 The photographs on this page show an unrestored PFA at a show in 2018, its body tapering to porthole lamps, and a restored cream PFA in 2021.

Électro-Renard of Lyon built two-seat electric cars from 1943 to 1946, with a quoted range of 72 km (45 miles). Nothing else about them has been found.source 9

No Autélec is known to survive, and no Brodeau or Électro-Renard has been traced. The wartime Pierre Faure has fared better: at least one 1941 PFA survives, and has been offered at auction.source 8