The story
History
In the summer of 1919 J. S. Rasmussen, the owner of DKW, came across Rudolf Slaby driving his little electric car in Berlin, and ordered a hundred on the spot, to sell at the Leipzig Fair.source 2 The car lasted five years; the meeting outlived it.
An aircraft engineer’s car
Slaby was born in Berlin in 1887, the son of Adolf Slaby, a professor at the Technische Hochschule Charlottenburg and a co-founder of Telefunken. He studied mechanical engineering and worked in the German aircraft industry; when the Treaty of Versailles restricted aircraft building he changed course, and took his doctorate at Hanover in 1919.source 2 That year he and his cousin Hermann Beringer founded the SB-Automobil-Gesellschaft, SB for Slaby-Beringer, and began making small electric cars in the premises of Beringer’s paint works at Sophienstraße 19–22, Charlottenburg, near the Technische Hochschule.source 2source 3 The car was said to be meant for war invalids, who mostly could not afford it.source 2
Slaby’s car had no chassis. Its body carried the loads itself, decades before such a thing was usual: a wooden frame with panels, as most sources describe it, or a “Triplex” composite by German Wikipedia’s account, which is doubtful for 1919.source 2source 4source 5source 3 The maker’s brochure of 1922 put it simply.source 1
Fahrgestell und Karosserie sind zusammen aus einem Stück gearbeitet.
The SB-Einsitzer of 1922
By 1922 the single-seater was planked in fine woods, left in their natural colour, and padded inside. It was 2.30 m long and 1.00 m wide on a track of 0.8 m, and weighed 240 kg, of which the batteries were 130 kg. A ½ PS motor on 48 volts gave 24 km/h (15 mph) and about 80 km (50 miles) on a charge. It had two reverse speeds to match the two forward ones, since the controller simply reversed the motor. It had electric lights, a speedometer lit by an inspection lamp, a tool box and a spare wheel at the back. With the emergency seat it was 2.60 m long, weighed 280 kg and had a 1 PS motor. Some of the brochure’s figures are corrected by hand on the scanned copy, and the price was on a separate sheet that has not been found.source 1
Als ausgesprochener Selbstfahrer verbindet diese Type bei einfachster Handhabung eine vollkommene Betriebssicherheit und zeichnet sich durch Sauberkeit und geringste Betriebs- und Unterhaltungskosten aus.
The range grew round it. The SB-Mehrsitzer chassis carried a three-seat body on two 1 PS motors in the rear axle, which could be switched to act as a charging set, so that the car charged itself from direct, alternating or three-phase current at 110 or 220 volts. An electric works truck, the SB-Lastkarren, carried 1,500 kg.source 1 In 1921 SB also offered small electric lorries, and a photograph of that year shows two single-seaters coupled into a six-wheeled tandem.source 4
Japan, and the earthquake
The cars went abroad. In 1920 Gamages, the London department store, imported the car from Germany.source 3 From 1920, by German Wikipedia’s account, 200 went to Japan, which became the main market: government offices and taxi firms bought them through The Japan and German Electric Cyclecar Co. of Osaka, which published its own house magazine.source 2 The inflation had already left the firm short of money and dependent on guarantees. Then the Great Kantō earthquake of 1923 destroyed a large consignment and the Japanese importer with it, and the Japanese business collapsed.source 2 The whole Japanese story rests on that one source.
Petrol, and DKW
Rasmussen had bought an SB car for experiments and fitted a DKW engine to it, outside on the left.source 4 Now he put in more money, and SB began making small cars with DKW petrol engines; from 1924 there was a two-seater.source 2source 4 It was not enough. The SB-Automobil-Gesellschaft filed for insolvency in June 1924, and the Berlin works stopped on 1 September. Rasmussen bought what was left to protect his investment and made it the Berlin branch of J. S. Rasmussen AG.source 2 About 2,000 cars had been built.source 2source 5
Slaby went with them. As DKW’s designer and technical director he created its first car, the P 15 PS of 1927–28, a water-cooled two-stroke twin in a self-supporting plywood body, built, as German Wikipedia puts it, the Slaby way. The line ran on from there to Auto Union and Audi.source 2source 4
